188 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



lost itself in Lake Hindmarsli. Again he started off 

 on another wild-goose chase. He had seen the Lindsay 

 pour its waters into Lake Hindmarsh, and he would 

 run it to earth. Alas ! it was a characteristic AustraUan 

 river, which soon disappeared in the ground. Then, after 

 having nearly lost his life in the dreaded mallee scrub, 

 he came back to the stock he had left in charge. Of 

 course, he had lost the race. 



These overlanders were the saviours of new colonies. 

 The older settlements. Governor Sir George Gipps told 

 Lord John Russell in 1840, were the hives " whence 

 swarms of sheep and cattle were driven to give value 

 to the lands of Port Phillip and South AustraUa, which 

 without them would to this day be an unprofitable 

 wilderness. The enterprising colonists," he added, 

 " who first drove sheep from New South Wales to 

 Victoria rescued that colony from ruin." Hawdon 

 we have already seen at work. In 1836 he was the first 

 to drive or send cattle from New South Wales to Port 

 Phillip. Later in the same year W. A. Brodribb started 

 the second draft of cattle. The two of them, he tells 

 us, were " the first to mark a road to Melbourne." The 

 explorer blazes a track. The overlander marks a road.* 



Such trips were frequent. Did a squatter on the 

 Broken River in New South Wales sell his stock to Port 

 Phillippians ? He would make a trip overland in order 

 to deliver it to the purchaser. Taking with him a 

 servant, a gig, and 2 horses, he would accomplish the 

 journey in ten days, and in three days more the delivery 

 would be accomplished. t 



Such an overlander might sell his own surplus stock, 

 or he might purchase stock to sell it over again. He 

 would return to Sydney, and purchase, say, 1,200 head 

 of cattle, grazing at a station 300 miles to the westward. 

 He would then, what he called, organize an expedition 

 to take possession of these cattle. He would buy several 

 stock-horses, pack-horses, teams of working-bullocks, 



* Brodribb, Recollections, p. 15. 

 t Ibid., pp. 19-20. 



