1396 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



The wool at one time was, as a rule, washed on the sheep's back, but now it is 

 principally shorn and sent to market in the grease ; and unless it is exceptionally dirty 

 only the "locks and pieces" are now scoured. In scouring on the station the most common 

 mode is to soak the fleece first in large cisterns of hot water and soap, and then 

 plunge it into the river in perforated zinc boxes, men meanwhile stirring the wool 

 with long poles. When the requisite degree of cleanliness is secured, the wool is taken 

 to the drying-ground, where it is spread out in the sun, the portion of the land- 

 scape so used looking as if it had received a fall of snow. The wool dries clean and 

 white, and is then pressed into bales for market. There are, however, a good many 

 scouring establishments in the colony where wool sent down in the grease is washed 

 by machinery. On the shearing being finished, the teams come into view, and the bales 

 are stacked upon waggons and conveyed to the nearest railway station, or to some 

 shipping-place on a river. Here, again, a great advantage is possessed by modern wool- 

 growers over those of the old days, when there were no railways and no river steamers, 

 and the teams were often six and nine months, and sometimes a whole year, and 

 more, on the roads. 



THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST. 



ONE of the very first duties of the early settlers was to try to make the earth 

 yield its sustenance, and the Home Government was urgent that the settlement 

 should become self-supporting, with respect to food, at the earliest possible date. Seeds 

 had been brought out, and experiments on a small scale were soon made at Farm Cove, 

 at Grose Farm, and at Parramatta. But tillage proceeded slowly, and with many diffi- 

 culties, and more than one harvest season passed by before the little settlement ceased 

 its dependence for breadstuffs on India. The land in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 Sydney, with the exception of a few patches here and there, is not very favourable to 

 farming ; but the discovery of rich alluvial land on the banks of the Hawkesbury, and 

 of good trap-soil at Camden, gave somewhat more encouragement to those who drove 

 the plough. The starting of the sheep-farming industry drew men's attention a good 

 deal away from agriculture, and grain-growing was more attended to in Tasmania than in 

 the metropolitan county of New South Wales. Indeed, it is rather a remarkable fact 

 that the mother-colony has never, during the whole century of its existence, provided 

 itself with breadstuffs. This is partly due to the fact that the settlers have found 

 grazing the more profitable occupation, and partly to the physical geography of the 

 colony. The metropolitan district has not much good arable land, while ranges of moun- 

 tains cut it off from the fine wheat-lands on the inner slopes. Along the coast wheat 

 can be grown, but the farmers are much troubled with rust and the weevil. The conse- 

 quence is that in the older colony wheat-growing has met with many discouragements, 

 and it is only within the past few years that the acreage under the plough has been 

 sufficient to give promise of an adequate harvest, and that promise has been spoilt first 

 by drought, and secondly by unseasonable rains. But with a good season, the colony 

 could, and probably would, produce more than enough wheat to make its own loaf. 

 What agriculture there was prior to 1851 was a good deal checked by the discovery of 



