198 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



tracts at his finger-ends. He keeps the various parties 

 in hand. Toihng all day and half the night, he does 

 the work of two or of ten men. We do not wonder 

 that, in a comparatively few years, out of a salary of 

 £300, he saves so much as £2,000, or sometimes £3,000. 

 He is usually rewarded by being taken into partnership, 

 or becoming a runholder by himself. He often rises 

 to the Legislature.* 



The transition from squatter to manager reveals 

 the passing away of the true patriarchal stage. The 

 pastoralist who squatted in the midst of his flocks and 

 herds, and lived surrounded by his familia (in the old 

 Roman sense) — his family and his dependants, was 

 becoming a thing of the past. He preferred to live in 

 the provincial capital, where he might be a legislator or 

 a minister, where his children could be educated, his 

 sons find a career, and his daughters be married. At 

 best, he withdrew to his run when the season was over, 

 as the English country gentleman returns from London 

 in August to his " place " in the country. Or he sold 

 out to a syndicate or a mortgage or loan company, or 

 he was superseded by the bank, which foreclosed on 

 its mortgage and placed a manager in his room. The 

 station grew ever more into a commercial speculation. 



The lucrative results of the gold-discoveries tempted 

 squatters to sell out and depart for the metropohs. The 

 squatters got rich and promoted their stock-riders to be 

 overseers and their overseers to be managers. The 

 manager of a run has not always sprung from the 

 English rural class, nor graduated through successive 

 stages of experience in the bush. He may have be- 

 longed to the English urban classes. Sometimes the 

 secretary of a club has been taken straight from the 

 city to a station by a grazier who had confidence in his 

 capacity. 



On a large run owned by a wealthy pastoralist, who 

 resides in Sydney, where he is a legislator, there may 

 be a " swell super," with a salary of £1,000 a year, who 

 * Victorian Pioneers, p. 22. 



