THE ROUTE OF THE PASTORALIST 95 



were well-grassed ridges, copiously watered by streams. 

 This was news indeed, especially at a time Avhen New 

 England was in the throes of a long drought. The 

 doctor at once forgave his deserting servant and sent 

 him down with a flock of sheep to the district he had 

 discovered. Then he sat down on country close to the 

 present township of Grafton, which may be said to have 

 been founded on his station. Others soon followed. 

 The Ogilvies broke through the difficult mountain 

 ranges between the Clarence and the Upper Hunter, 

 and settled at Yulgilba.* 



Blacks sometimes guided pioneers in quest of runs 

 to a good situation for a station. In 1852 Messrs. Beck 

 and Brown were led by them to " the beautiful, open 

 blue-grass country " on the Moonee, which had escaped 

 the observation of exploring parties through being 

 hidden behind a scrubby and sandy frontage. There 

 they took up 1,100 square miles. f 



Sir George Bowen might well find " something 

 sublime in the steady, silent flow of pastoral occupation 

 over North-Eastern Austraha." With some leaps and 

 gaps it was spreading from Moreton Bay to the Gulf of 

 Carpentaria. Had he lived longer in Queensland, he 

 would have seen it spread over a far more difficult 

 and dangerous country — North and North-Western 

 Australia. 



A pioneering wave that had, more than anj'^ of its 

 predecessors, a large speculative and commercial 

 element within or at the back of it was that which 

 set, in the seventies, towards the Plains of Promise 

 discovered and christened by Captain Stokes, In the 

 early forties it fell to the lot of Stokes to expose the 

 hoUowness of the dazzling visions conjured up by Sir 

 George Grey on the sandy foundations of his imaginary 

 discoveries in Western Australia. By a singular 

 nemesis he was himself to make discoveries that proved 

 as illusory. Rowing up the Albert River in the Gulf 



* Baetley, Australian Pioneers, p. 41. 

 t Ibid., pp. 175-6. 



