CHAPTER XXXIV 



THE COMPANY AS PASTORALIST 



The Company has played so considerable a part in the 

 pastoral development of Austraha that it cannot be 

 ignored in describing that development ; but its part 

 has always been secondary, and here it must therefore 

 be content, Hke other pastoral features, with a skeleton 

 chapter, where space is lacking to clothe the naked 

 anatomy with flesh and blood. 



The natural evolution of the pastoraUst system was 

 from simple to complex forms. It began with the 

 taking up and the tenure of a single station by a single 

 individual, and this form has survived the others. The 

 next was the joint tenure of a run by two, or sometimes 

 three, related persons, oftenest brothers (and there were 

 many such),* or brothers-in-law, Hke the famous run- 

 holders, Beck and Brown, or otherwise related, then re- 

 peating the phase shown in the occupation of the plains 

 of Mamre by Abraham and Lot, uncle and nephew. 

 Perhaps the next phase, if it was not simultaneous, was 

 the co-partnery of two (or three) unrelated individuals. 

 The passage from this phase to the company was 

 insensible. A number of small companies, never incor- 

 porated, like the Lochinvar and St. Ruth Company, and 

 one mentioned by Edward Palmer, both in Queensland, 



* Squatting firms of brothers abound in the Letters from 

 Victorian, Pioneers. Thus, there are — Bateses, Whytes, three 

 Wedges, Carmichaels, Addisone (three of them), Ruffys (again 

 three of them), Dennises, Learmonths, Watsons, Collyers, Mani- 

 folds, Yuilles, Simsons, Campbells, FaithfuUs, Pykes, McLeods, 

 O'Rourkes. 



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