184 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



" Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me : if thou wilt 

 take the left hand, then I will go to the right ; or if 

 thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left." 

 They forsook their native or early seats, together with 

 their kindred, whom they might not see again, and 

 went, Uke the migrant and semi-nomadic Boers of South 

 Africa, on trek. 



The nomad instinct proper to the pastoral race was 

 often enough shown by the early Victorian squatters. 

 Many of them were continually on the move. One 

 removed from the Seven Creeks northward to the great 

 Saltbush Desert. Others changed, more sensibly, from 

 the Upper Yarra to the richly grassed Western division 

 of Victoria. Others still ruined everything for the sake 

 of change, and gave up good stations for ones that were 

 far inferior.* Thus, John Highett " remained (moving 

 about) a short time on the Barwon," before he removed 

 into the Melbourne district. Messrs. Manifold removed 

 from one station to another. Messrs. Learmonth left 

 the Barwon for Buninyong.f 



Much of the nomadism arose through the same neces- 

 sity as made and makes the Mesopotamians and Central 

 Asians nomadic. The Boers of the Transvaal shift all 

 their stock every summer from the low to the high veldt 

 and in winter shift it back to the low. In time of 

 " drought the more sedentary pastoralists of Australia 

 remove their starving flocks from the scorched plains 

 to the cool and still grass-covered highlands. " It was 

 only," writes a Victorian pioneer, " by having my 

 marching establishment complete, and thus constantly 

 shifting my ground, that I was enabled to keep the stock 

 alive." t 



The nomadism of the old pastoralist was no less deeply 

 ingrained in the Queensland squatters. Thus, the 

 earliest of Queensland squatters, Patrick Leshe, sold 

 out in 1856 the run he had culled from his many seizures, 



* BoLDREWooD, Old Melbourne Memories, ch. xiv. 

 t Victorian Pioneers, pp. 136, 155. 

 j Ibid., p. 205. 



