70 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AU STEAL ASIA 



and shearer, one Dockrill. A saying current in New 

 Zealand is to the effect that the first man who goes on 

 the land breaks his heart ; the second goes into the 

 bankruptcy court ; and the third makes a fortune. 



The vicissitudes of runs can be adequately shown 

 only in detail. The manager of a company or firm 

 often stepped into the place of the runholder. Thus, 

 Alfred Crowder, a manager for the Lochinvar, Rosenthal, 

 and St. Ruth Company, formed Weranga station. His 

 brother, John, stocked it. He put J. Miller in charge 

 of it. Then Hook bought it, when it was sold to Mort 

 and Laidley. Manager J. Miller formed Dulacca, which 

 had been taken up by another manager, J. Crowder, 

 but Miller formed it in 1855. Miller held it till 1857, 

 when he took Miles as a partner, who subsequently 

 bought Miles out. 



The average station went through four different 

 stages. First, it was a fattening station, with a choice 

 herd of cattle ; for all its improvements, a stock-yard 

 and a hut. It was valued at £30. Next, it was adver- 

 tised as fully improved, fenced, and subdivided sheep- 

 property. Thirdly, it was a valuable pastoral estate 

 of 35,000 acres freehold. Finally, it consisted of rich 

 agricultural land, divided to suit intending farmers. 



The early pastoralists are long in dying out. When 

 these denizens of the past are extinct in Victoria and 

 New South Wales, they are but coming into being in 

 Southern Queensland and, afterwards in Northern 

 Queensland, and when they are passing away in Queens- 

 land, they are re-incarnating themselves in the squatters 

 of Western Queensland, the Northern Territory and 

 the north of Western Austraha. There, if no longer 

 elsewhere, are still to be found the great cattle-runs, 

 the Gauchohke stockmen, the trained camp-horses, the 

 wild scrub cattle ; and there life is as rough as it was 

 of old in the tracts where sheep have long ago supplanted 

 cattle, or wheat-growing has supplanted sheep-breeding. 

 There the comparatively small runs of the more southerly 

 regions are unknown. Scattered sparsely over vast 



