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1 May, 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAT) 1°.» MOEN 
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enough for a pig. That will never enable farmers to ooth prices for their 
swine, or alow them to compete with other éountries in sr SAN tie bacon 
market. 
The housivg of pigs leads us on to speak of the housing of cattle. Those 
who have travelled across the vast black-soil plains on horseback, by vehicle, 
or on foot before the advent of railways, have often had bitter experience of 
the chilling, cutting, westerly winds blowing across those plains. In wet seasons 
they have also had a worse time, owing to the sodden country, in some parts 
so flat that the superabundant water hasno means of escape, but that of slowly 
sinking into the ground. Now, what about dairy cattle exposed to such 
conditions, as hundreds are? Can any sane person expect to get good milk 
returns or to rear strong healthy calves from animals tucked up with cold and 
wet day and night, often without the shelter of a single tree, or gasping with 
heat and thirst in a shadeless paddock during the hot daysin summer? Yet 
this is a state of affairs which may yet be seen on some otherwise excellently 
managed farms. 
We have not mentioned the condition of agricultural operations in the 
sugar districts, because on the large estates everything is done which experience 
can suggest to bring the cane to perfection. Neither capital nor intelligence 
are wanting here, and it needs only a run through the sugar districts of 
Bundaberg, Mackay, and other Northern centres of the industry to be con- 
vinced that this particular phase of agriculture is conducted on the best and 
most paying principles. : : 
Let us now consider whether it is a fact that the so-called “ cockatoo 
farmer’? is a man of the past. Some may ask, “What is a cockatoo farmer?” 
The reply is, that he is the man who laid the foundation of the prosperous 
agriculture of to-day. He is the man who, in the face of great difficulties, 
made the rich agricultural districts of the Rosewood Scrub, the Isis, the Oxley, 
Brisbane, in fact; who turned the dense scrub or jungle into the thriving 
agricultural districts ‘they are to-day. He was the pioneer to whom we owe 
our present-day agricultural prosperity. 
With no capital bevond a few pounds, which he expended in tools and 
rations, he attacked scrubs which would make a new arrival stand aghast if he 
were told to go there and make a home and a living for himself,-and many of 
them, despite great difficulties, of which droughts and Moods were not the least, 
are now reaping the reward of their early labours, and are living in comfort and 
affluence. Butare there no cockatoo farmers now? It needs only to travel 
into the Blackall Range, the Blenheim Mountain scrubs, to take a tour in the 
North amongst the sugar-growers, on all the Northern rivers, to receive ocular 
demonstration that the cockatoo farmer is still at his glorious, self-denying, 
laborious work, and that work will be continued until the very last tree is 
felled on the very last scrub selection in the country. 
When visitors from other lands come to exploit Queensland with a view 
cither to settlement or from mere curiosity, what advice do they get on all 
sides? ‘‘ You must take a trip to the Downs, then you will get an idea of the 
agricultural prosperity and of the agricultural resources of the colony.” Only 
lately it has been decided to issue free railway passes to captains of the British 
India steamers trading to Queensland, and some of these gentlemen have 
already availed themselves of the privilege by visiting the Downs. Captain 
Long, of the B.1.S.S. ‘“ Duke of Devonshire,” lately made an extended tour in 
‘the Warwick and Toowoomba district, and on his return, during an interview 
with a representative of the Brisbane Courier, he stated that he was greatly 
impressed with what he had seen, and described the land as being “the best it 
had ever been his lot to travel over.’ And Captain Long, who has seen many 
lands and has had many opportunities of seeing fertile agricultural districts, 
was quite right in his estimate of the Downs country. 
‘There he saw rich Jands, vast areas of scientifically farmed wheat land, up- 
to-date implements, good cattle, good horses, and got among men who were 
thoroughly up to their business. 
