AUSTRALIA 63 



rivers, and all the rest of the occupied runs is really waste. 

 There are still considerable areas which have never been taken 

 up ; some of it on account of the blacks, who are troublesome 

 in the back country. 



But all accounts agree that there is any amount of room for 

 a big increase in the Kimberley lands when the back country 

 is opened out and provided with water. The West Australian 

 Government has now erected treatment works at Wyndham, 

 and although they are largely a failure in that they have cost 

 a ruinous price to build, and that they can only offer the East 

 Kimberley pastoralist 2fd. lb. for his beef instead of its value 

 on the Queensland coast, still they will open out some sort of 

 a market for the country ; and with the dawn of better days 

 the Government may perchance write off the £350,000 to 

 £400,000 of waste due to Departmentalism and day labour, 

 and hand the concern over to the growers to run for them- 

 selves. In any case the Wyndham Works represent the 

 beginning of a new chapter in the history of Kimberley, which 

 will be progressive in exact proportion to the removal of the 

 Government blight upon its marketing facilities, and pros- 

 perous as that consummation is effected. Some day also freez- 

 ing works must surely come to Derby, the front of West 

 Kimberley, to terminate the day of cattle shipments south- 

 ward, and their waste of 100 lbs. per bullock, and to ship away 

 the product of the country in cold storage, or in tins, with the 

 tallow and hides. 



Working southwards from Kimberley we come to the North- 

 west and Gascoyne divisions — a huge and partly opened-out 

 country, running some 111,807 cattle, or less than there were 

 ten years ago, when there were over 122,000 cattle in these 

 provinces. From this country a portion of the beef supply of 

 Perth is drawn, and notwithstanding the importation of 

 20,000 cattle from Kimberley in 1916, and 10,000 in 1918, the 

 consumptive drain upon the country is more than it can stand. 

 There are not 3000 bullocks of marketable ages north of Mee- 

 katharra and south of Wallal to-day ; and there is every in- 

 dication that in a year or two it will be difficult to keep pace 

 with consumption. 

 . There is plenty of cattle country vacant in the North-west, 



