CHAPTER IV 



ON A SELECTION 



She helped him make a little home, 



Where once were gum trees quaint and stark 

 And blood-woods waved green-feathered foam, 



Working from dawn of day till dark, 

 Till that dark forest formed a frame 



For vineyards that the gods might bless ; 

 And what was savage once became 



An Eden in the wilderness. 



VICTOR DAI,E;Y. 



the origin of the term "selector," we 

 1 must go back to an Act passed by the New 

 South Wales Parliament in 1861. Ten years had 

 passed since the gold discoveries, and many of 

 the immigrants were clamouring for land for farm- 

 ing purposes. A L,and Act was accordingly 

 passed permitting the "selection" of blocks of 

 land from forty to three hundred acres in extent, 

 to be purchased from the State by the selector on 

 a system of instalment payments. The Act even 

 allowed the selection to be made on areas leased 

 as pastoral holdings, and soon the squatters found 

 the selectors occupying the most fertile and best- 

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