346 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. {1 May, 1898. 
But how many sight-seers and globe-trotters ever venture into the mountain 
scrubs? There is the place to see the true pioneer of Queensland farming. 
Following the timber-getter and shingle-splitter, come the men dauntless and 
full of energy who carve out a home for themselves in a wilderness which 
might well make the stranger exclaim: “Is it possible that men can be found 
stout enough of heart to attack this tremendous jungle?” Not only are the 
men found to attempt it, but they do it, and after years of toil and privation, 
we see, in place of the mass of tree vegetation, miles of cleared land, covered 
with luxuriant crops of sugar-cane, maize, potatoes, arrowroot, lucerne, &e. 
Townships arise, sugar-mills are built, and the district where once the sole 
occupants were the dingo and the wallaby, becomes wealthy and prosperous. 
No plough or horses can be used by the cockatoo farmer for two 
or three years. All work is done with the hoe. All his acres are 
studded with innumerable stumps. Every bag of corn or potatoes 
has to be carried on his back out of the field. | When sugar-cane has 
been planted on newly-felled scrub it is necessary when his crop is ready 
for the mill to cut roads through the stumps to allow of the passage of the 
cane carts. Only after about three years can the scrub farmer begin to 
indulge in the dream of a plough. Most of the stumps have rotted out by 
that time, and only the larger ones remain to be laboriously extracted. Often 
these pioneers locate themselves in waterless scrubs, and in addition to their 
daily labour have to cart water often for several miles. ‘Thisis the case to-day 
in the mountain scrubs between Laidley and Gatton, as it was in earlier times 
in the Rosewood and other scrubs. The scrub farmer rarely can keep even one 
cow during his early struggle, so that often he and his family saw no milk 
except on occasion of a visit to the nearest township. Corned beef and 
bread constituted the family’s daily diet till a first crop of potatoes and 
vegetables could be grown. ‘To-day a better state of affairs obtains in this 
respect, owing to‘the extension of railways, but the labours of the “ cockatoo 
farmer” are the same, and will be the same until, as we said before, the last 
scrub is cleared. The day of the “ cockie,” then, is not past. i 
THOSE SUMMER CROPS. 
By HENRY A, TARDENT, 
: Manager, Westbrook Experimental arm. 
My worthy and genial colleague, Mr. J. Mahon, the Government Instructor in 
Dairying, has often emphasised the necessity for the farmer, who wants to 
make a success of his dairy, providing shelter and artificial feeding for his 
cows. ‘Ihe longer one lives here the more one gets convinced that, were this 
advice rigidly followed, Queensland would become in a short time one of the 
greatest dairying and bacon-producing countries in the world. ; 
Nowhere else, to my knowledge, do such opportunities exist for having 
all the year round not only ample provisions of hay and ensilage, but also of. 
greenstuff of some kind; and anyone who has had to do with dairying knows 
how a small admixture of greenstuff in the daily ration is conducive to good 
digestion, and.consequent good health and full pails. 
On the east coast and in the North, where there is hardly any frost, the 
farmer has special facilities with crops adapted to the climate there, such as 
maize, lucerne, sugar-cane, teosinte, &e. West of the Range and far inland; 
we rely in winter on the cereals of temperate countries, such as wheats, oats, 
barleys, ryes, &c., also rape. For summer we find most reliable and profitable 
crops in the sweet potatoes (both as a root and stem crop), in the now well- 
acclimatised cow-pea, and in the varied milleits and sorghums. 
I have been experimenting with the latter for a good many years, under 
most varied circumstances of dry and wet seasons. The good opinion I had 
formed of them as summer crops has been, if possible, strengthened by the 
systematic and comparative experiments with them carried out this season at 
the Westbrook Experiment Farm, 
