FIRST CENTURY OF DAIRYING IN NEW SOUTH WALES. 



to the surrounding districts of the Hunter River, Port Macquarie, 

 Bathurst, and Wellington coming into composition with counties of 

 Camden, Cumberland, and Argyle. The same writer states : " The 

 character and quality of our herds are acquiring increased usefulness 

 and value through "the use of imported highly improved English, 

 Scotch, and Irish bulls and their male descendants, and that every 

 owner of cattle will find an interest in breeding from the best male 

 stock from the herd of Sir John Jamison." Mr. John Horsley, who 

 was on the committee of the association, sent some of Sir John's 

 breed of cattle to his estate at Tllawarra, as did also Mr. David John- 

 ston. Mr. Charles Throsby's herd at Bong Bong was recognised the 

 best on the tableland. It is stated that the Holderness and Long- 

 horns, characterised by their white backs, bellies, and faces, were very 

 much admired in those days by the smaller settlers. The whole of 

 the South Coast was suffering more or less from the continued 

 drought, which had practically continued from 1826, and bush fires 

 were raging on the mountains and range sides. As Carlyle says : 

 " Do not fires, fevers, sown seeds, chemical mixtures, men, events, all 

 embodiments of ' force' that work in this miraculous complex of 

 4 forces,' named universe, go on growing through their natural phases 

 and developments, each according to its kind ; reach their height, 

 reach their visible decline ; finally sink under, vanishing, and what 

 we call die ? They all grow ; there is nothing but what grows, and 

 shoots forth into its special expansion, once give it leave to spring. 

 Observe, too, that each grows with a rapidity proportioned in gener'il 

 to the energy or unhealthiness there is in it. Slow, regular growth, 

 though this end in death, is what we name healthy energy." 



A mob of cattle was selected in the Illawarra district by the Go- 

 vernment authorities in Queensland for the use of the settlement. 

 These were the first cattle introduced into that country, and were 

 depastured at Red Bank Plains, in the vicinity of " Limestone" (now 

 Ipswich). They were in charge of a constable named Thome. Several 

 of these animals got away from their keepers, and travelled back to 

 their native haunts in Illawarra. (See Stuart Russell's " Genesis of 

 Queensland '") fr 



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