UP THE COUNTRY IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1207, 11 June 1872, Page 2

UP THE COUNTRY IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

LByacorrespondentoftheJDi/^^iiKmes.] ....'-. Adelaide, May 35. The Summer is well brer at last lam pleased to say, and the pleasant crackle of - the cheerful evening fire is heard in every home. The fallen leaves of fig and apricot, almond} and vine, lie strewn about the garden paths, or wandering hither and thither like poor houseless street Arabs, made to move on by that boisterous policeman, the wind. The air i§ jfeen and. clear and pleasant, the sombre brown of the burnt-up pasture lands is giving place to delicate tints of green here and there, and on the crowns of the" high downs bet hind the town, which have been the: first to catch the passing showers and cool breezes, the grass is growing green and luscious. The "myriad- insect pests that vexed us in the: summer have passed away with the hot winds ; the clouds of locusts— -thousands upon thousands travel? ling day after day, from north to south,, and devouring every green thing' that came in their way, are no.' longer a source of amazement". Ifo possible exaggeration of language can give any definite :• idea of the swarms, of these destroyers, which day after day, for- upwards of a week, passed over the city of Adelaide. They were something like large grasshoppers, but with a strength of wing which was simply wonderful; looking upwards as far as the eye could distinguish, you could see their tiny wings glistening in the sun ; and a gentleman who had been on the top of the Postoffice tower informed me that even from this altitude they could be seen in a compact mass high up above him. We heard sad accounts; of the mischief they had done in the cornfields up north, of theif having stripped the leaves of the sheroafc trees, and that the unfortunate maxketgardehers, in the hills, were almost beside themselves. A rumor was. current that millions of them (the locusts, not the gardeners) were drowned in the reservoir, which happily proved untrue ; and it was stated for a fact that the fishermen • in the Gulf could not get>the snappers to take their bait because of the quantity of dead locusts floating -about. Two flights of these destroyers passed over our city during the summer; in * both' cases making towards the south. If, as 3ome assert, , they ' have l§ft theip sggs to fruqtify nest, summery Jhp Jtrong probability seems to be that khejr progeny will be obliged to take to sannibalism from sheer necessity, for I lon't see how they will get enough vegeiable food to supply their wants. I think [ shall take a tour to New Zealand, for I ihouldn'i like tMfe locusts to do for me vhat the rats did for Bishop Hatto. v Well, -"sufficient unto the day is the evil hereof. » The loousts.are drowned, the nosquitoes are, dead,, the spiders and mats, the flies and centipedes have eased to. torment and affright, and louth Australia is to-day a very cheerful nd comfortable place to live in, which is great deal .more than could have been

said of it a few weeks ago, the very remembrance of which makes one begin to feel warm. I visited the other day a pleasant little farming district, some forty miles north of Adelaide, and became, for the first time, acquainted with country life in South Australia. The whole of the country between Adelaide and Gawler has been cropped year after year for upwards of twenty years, and has been so completely beggared out that I should imagine a very large proportion of it to be almost worthless for agricultural purposes. On either side of the line of railway you see big, bleak, ragged-looking paddocks, Burrounded by dilapidated post and rail fences, and, as far as I could judge, a tolerably determined flock of sheep might have taken across country between Adelaide and Oawler without much hindrance in the way of fences. Here and there these monotonous lines were varied with a hedge of kangaroo j furze, but these live fences do not seem to answer, and in the main this furze was only growing in irregular patches, looking in the distance like scraggy bushes of Cape broom. The large proportion of the homesteads were but sorry stone shanties, and the absence of outbuildings and stacks was a noticeable feature as compared with New Zealand farm scenery ; one missed also th* trimly kept garden so common with you, and the long lines of well-trimmed gorse hedges. The dreary, and in many cases squalid, appearance of country houses both here and in Victoria presents a sorry evidence of the impoverished condition of many of the tillers of the sott> Time was when these Adelaide plains brought forth abundant crops ; when they only required to be "tickled with the harrow to laugh with the harvest;" but "Ichabod" is now very plainly written on almost every acre of them. The only way to insure a crop at all is by a long course of fallowing and working the land, so as to destroy the rubbish in the shape of wild oats and drake which accumulate upon it. The inability to grow English grasses is a very serious drawback to the success of agriculture in this country, and one which no amount ofgood. farming can altogether mitigate. Wheat, wheat, wheat, year after year; then wheat and wild oats; then wheat, wild oats, and drake ; and then the three together, with serious doubts, upon looking at the crop, as to which had received the thickest seeding; then a varied, but scanty, growth of vegetation cut for hay ; and then wide wastes of dreary fallow lands, with ruin aud decay written on every homestead and every fence. The longer the land has been settled, the , worse it has become ; the baneful infinences of cultivation are the most painful sights I have witnessed in South Australia. I olame nobody for it. 1 see no remedy for it, except we resuscitate the squatters; and a3 they have led the van of civilisation, so let them bring up the rear. At Dry Creek, a station at the junction of the Port and Northern line of railways, lies the material imported from England at a cost of some L 20,000 for a' bridge across the river Murray. Hundreds upon hundreds of tons of expensive iron girders and trusses lie rußting away at the mercy of the elements. The cost of erecting the bridge and of carting the material to the site, and of making the approaches to it, seem to have been matters of afterthought, for we are gravely told that the Government have no funds to spare for these purposes, besides which the residents on the Murray can't agree as to where it should ' be, and no Government ever remains in office long enough here to settle matters of this kind. Mr Yogel might make a bid for it for some of your New Zealand rivers, and the writer would be happy to conduct the negotiation. (N.B. — The usual commission) of course.) South Australia ought to get rid of it somehow, for it is an evidence of her folly which every stranger generally laughs at. It will, as a matter of course, rust out in time, but a more speedy mode of exit -would be desirable. However, the train has whirled us out of sight of the iron monster for the present, and here we are at Oawler, with the smoke 'of three of the best flour mills in the colony pouring forth from three tall chimneys, one of which is close to the railway station, and if it fell would probably kill an official or two. Two of these mills belong to Messrs Duffield and Co., and one to MrDawson. At the latter many thousand bushels of your New. Zealand oats are made into meal every year. And here, for the present, good reader, we part company.