REMINISCENCES OF ILLAWARRA. 



decided on going on the land ; his brothers and others arrived in 1843. 

 He therefre journeyed to Sydney to meet them, having previously 

 heai d that Air. James Robb, of Sydney, who had purchased the Rivers- 

 dale Estate, Kiama, had determined to let that estate on the clearing 

 lease system. The whole estate consisted of 1280 acres of bush and 

 scrub land. Mr. Grey undertook the whole settlement for a term of 

 years, and induced his brothers Henry and William and eighteen other 

 families to come to Kiama and settle on this Riversdale Estate. Each 

 family took up a small farm, and set to work to .fell and clear suffi- 

 cient for a small crop and to lay down grass to keep a few cows. 

 Their wants were few, especially after the first year or two, when 

 they began to grow their own -food. They were good judges of cattle, 

 and very soon each family began milking from ten to twenty cows, 

 and as time went on and their sons and daughters grew up they were 

 able to go further afield and take up large holdings, thus making 

 room for the smaller settlers and later arrivals from the old lands. 

 Those with large, industrious families, in the course of a few years 

 either increased their holding by lease or purchase, and were soon 

 in possession of dairy herds averaging from thirty to sixty dairy cows 

 each. At the beginning of this system of dairying few, indeed, were 

 in a position to make a keg of butter per week. The local storekeepers, 

 however, bought it, and packed it in kegs and sent it by sloops to 

 Sydney, the farmers receiving from is. 6d. to 2s. 6d. per Ib. These 

 prices, with wheat averaging from 55. to IDS. per bushel, and maize 

 from 4s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. per bushel, with pigs, calves, eggs, and poultry 

 selling -freely at good prices, soon made dairying the poor man's only 

 hope. 



True, there were more fascinating means of making money to wit, 

 station Irfe, with its exciting yet free and active life in the open 

 country beneath the sun's rays, -far from the busy noise of the large 

 towns and cities. Herds of cattle we're kept at out stations, each 

 'lumbering -from 500 to 2000, or even 3000 head. They were under the 

 charge of stockmen, two or three being attached to a large drove. 

 The chief stockman had his hut, huti-keeper, his only possession 

 being his stockwhip, saddle, hobbles, quart-pot, saddlebags, and horses. 

 He could be recognised almost anywhere by his energetic gait, a free, 

 daring, and somewhat reckless manner, a beard of ancient date, with 

 long square-cut hair, a tweed jacket, >iustian or strapped trousers, and 

 a cabbage-tree hat securely fastened beneath the chin. His whip, the 

 symbol of his office, had a short tapering handle with a tapering thong 

 of I2ft. or I4ft., terminating with a " cracker." This formidable in- 

 strument in the dexterous hand ot an Australian stockman, when 

 mounted on a reliable horse, has terrific effect on the hide of a re- 

 fractory bullock when endeavouring to break away from the mob. 

 The whole art of stock-keeping in Australia in those times seems to 

 have centred itself in feats of horsemanship, and this art consisted in 

 a well-established and faithfully-kept compact between the two parties 

 in the affair that the horse shall look out for all dangers underfoot, 

 including chasms in the earth loft, wide and of unknown depth, the 

 rider guarding his own brains from overhanging branches of forest 

 trees, which emphatically threatened them a^dozen times in the course 

 of a -few minutes. However apparently perilous the work, it \vas very 

 rarely that accidents of serious consequence occurred. Fond of his 

 Mazeppa-like steed and his vocation, the stockman gradually grew to 

 look with disdain upon the humble, plodding dairyman. 



Nevertheless, the squatting king had his bitter experiences in New 

 South Wales. When not harassed by droughts, he was often on the 

 verge of ruin owing to fluctuations in prices. In the year 1835, when 

 live stock had sunk to an unprecedentedly low value, the colonists had 

 recourse to the only expedient namely, boiling down the enti're car- 

 cases of some of their cattle io r the extraction of the tallow, ansd 

 thus turning them to account. This plan had been experimented on 

 some time before by Mr. O'Brien, of Yass Plains, by which means 



r8 7 . 



