ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 19 



But, it may be asked, is it right and safe to bring a sewage 

 farm so near the town — was not the costly pumping plant and 

 main sewers of the Parramatta scheme, for instance, specially 

 designed in order to get it away from the town. Herein lies the 

 inconsistency of some such schemes — on the one hand copious evid- 

 ence is brought forward to prove that no nuisance is likely to 

 arise, and on the other hand great trouble is taken, and much 

 money proposed to be spent, in order to remove the farm to a dis- 

 tance. If no nuisance is to arise, clearly there is no need to go so 

 far afield with the farm, there is no reason to put it in any special 

 locality, other than for reasons of convenience and general suitability 

 of the site. I know of no evidence to show that the vicinity of 

 such a farm is necessarily injurious to health. The sewage applied, 

 to the land in a fresh condition, in a properly intermittent manner, 

 is destroyed without causing a nuisance. If the farm be properly 

 managed, the vegetables grown on the farm are safe articles of 

 food. No disease results to the workers on the farm, nor to the 

 cattle fed on its produce, for no special disease is generated there, 

 and the disease particles from men and animals carried to the 

 farm by the sewage, if not already dead, meet there conditions 

 so adverse to their existence that they probably speedily die. 

 Almost any sort of soil will do, the end result will be the same, 

 but the more suitable the soil the greater the quantity of sewage 

 it will deal with. I have seen figures up to five thousand persons 

 per acre. 



With these remarks, then, I recommend this most natural system 

 of sewage disposal for consideration in all future sewage schemes 

 in this Colony, where land is often comparatively cheap, where 

 water available for irrigation is always valuable, where there 

 are no frosts to suspend the action of the organisms, nor very low 

 temperature, short of frost, to notably diminish their activity in 

 winter. And one of the most interesting places to visit near 

 Sydney is the Sewage Farm at Botany, where thirty-three and a 

 half acres actually in use dispose of the sewage (including storm 

 water) from thirty-five thousand souls, and where a total area of 



