THE TOWNS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



293 



interesting little fable concerning the fish, the frying-pan and the fire being still remem- 

 bered, the annexation did not take place. After a long period of unfriendliness the 

 burly navvy made peace between this outlying district and the metropolis. Having 



conquered the stubborn 

 mountains, he came 

 speedily across tin: plains 

 and laid the iron rails 

 down on -the river-banks, 

 crossing the Murrumbid- 

 gee at Wagga Wagga, 

 three hundred and nine 

 miles from Sydney, and 

 then rushing off to the 

 Murray, which he reached 

 at Albury. Not satisfied, 

 he came back to Junee, 

 and ran his lines along the 

 north bank of the Mur- 

 rumbidgee, all the way to 

 Hay, and made a branch 

 from a point on the Mur- 

 rumbidgee known as Xnr- 

 randera, seventy miles 

 south-west, to the pastoral 

 settlement of Jerilderie. 

 Then arose a struggle 

 between the rival ports of 



Sydney and Melbourne for this southern country's 

 trade. The river-traffic was soon overcome, but it 

 took some years to bring even a part of Riverina's 

 custom to Sydney, and it was done only by an 

 artificial arrangement of the railway rates, by which 

 the cost of carriage for long distances was reduced. 



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An area, comprising nearly three-fourths of the 



country through which the lines to Hay and Jerilderie pass, has been alienated from 

 the Crown, through being either selected or purchased under the Land Act of 1861 ; 

 the estates are large, some comprising a quarter of a million acres each. The 

 river-frontages are very valuable ; they are nearly all now used for grazing sheep, but 

 by-and-bye there . will be powerful irrigating plants and broad cultivation paddocks. 

 Give this river-country moisture, and the soil is so rich that it will produce immense 

 crops ; even now there is no better land for wool-raising in Australia, a sheep to each 

 acre being about its actual sustaining power. 



As the engine speeds along from Junee some small estates are crossed where 

 hundreds of acres are under cereal crops, mainly grown for hay. Then appear on the 



COOTAMUNDKA. 



