CATTLE PROSPECTS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA 209 



to the expense of improving the back country and carrying more 

 cattle till the runs earned more money than a bare subsistence 

 from the infrequent sales. And consequently the country has 

 never really been used, developed or stocked. All that the 

 lessees have done, up to the present, is to run the frontages of 

 the rivers and leave development till later on. The cattle seldom 

 work back more than seven miles from the rivers, and all the 

 rest of the occupied runs is really waste. There are still con- 

 siderable areas which have never been taken up ; some of it on 

 account of the blacks, who are troublesome in the back country. 



But all accounts agree that there is any amount of room for a 

 big increase in the Kimberley lands when the back country is 

 opened out and provided with water. The West Australian 

 Government has now erected treatment works at Wyndham, and 

 although they are largely a failure in that they have covst a 

 ruinous price to build, and that they can only offer the East 

 Kimberley pastoralist 2fd. lb. for his beef instead of its value 

 on the Queensland coast, still they will open out some sort of a 

 market for the country ; and with the dawn of better days the 

 Government may perchance write off the £350,000 to £400,000 of 

 waste due to Departmentalism and day labour, and hand the 

 concern over to the growers to run for themselves. In any ease 

 the Wyndham Works represent the beginning of a new chapter 

 in the history of Kimberley, which will be progressive in exact 

 proportion to the removal of the Government blight upon its 

 marketing facilities, and prosperous as that consummation is ef- 

 fected. Some day also freezing works must surely come to 

 Derby, the front of West Kimberley, to terminate the day of 

 cattle shipments southward, and their waste of 100 lbs. per 

 bullock, and to ship away the product of the country in cold 

 storage, in tins, tallow, and hides. 



Working southwards from Kimberley we come to the North- 

 west and Gascoyne divisions — a huge and partly opened out 

 country, running some 111,807 cattle, or less than there were 

 10 years ago, when there were over 122,000 cattle in these pro- 

 vinces. Prom this country a portion of the beef supply of Perth 

 is drawn, and notwithstanding the importation of 20,000 cattle 

 from Kimberley in 1916, and 10,000 in 1918, the consumptive 

 drain upon the country is more than it can stand. There are 

 not 3,000 bullocks of marketable ages north of Meekatharra and 

 south of Wallal to-day ; and there is every indication that in a 

 :year or two it will be difficult to keep pace with consumption. 



