A New Zealander’s Impressions of Australia as a Farmer’s Country.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 453, 12 March 1890, Page 6

A New Zealander’s Impressions of Australia as a Farmer’s Country.

(From the March number of “The New Zealand Farmer.’) A private letter recently received from a native of Auckland, who has been in Victoria for the last year or two, points out in a striking manner the immense advantages of New Zealand as a field for agricultural industry and enterprise as compared with the sister colonies of Australia. We commend to the attention of dissatisfied New Zealand rural settl rs, who may be thinking to better their condition by taking up land in Australia, the following extracts from thi s gentleman’s letter. The writer we know to be a highly intelligent, practical, and keenly observant man. He says :

Ignorance Concerning New Zealand. I am sure if the Australian settler was only better informed as to the real state of things in and about New Zealand, he would in nine cases out of ten migrate without a moment's hesitation. ■ It is astonishing how little truth is known to the general run of Australians, particularly natives, about New Zealand. The complete ignorance on the part of native Australians is simply incredible to any one who has not had to listen to the rubbish and nonsense they talk about it. Comparative Value of Australian and New Zealand Lind. Land • here, taking it acre for acre, equal quality and accessibility, is valued at double and troble what it can be acquired for in New Zealand. Mildura—the Chafley colony—is described to me as a knee-deep wilderness of sand and stunted gum-trees. Land is sold there at £2O an acre, and it costs nearly half as much more to bring it into cultivation. Yet, with all its advantage? in the way of irrigation —for which, by the way, those occupying the land will have to pay special water rates—it will not be equal in productivene-s to large areas of land that I know of in New Zealand that can be bought, in cultivatioq, for £4 or £5 an acre. For my own part I would as soon take up land on the Kaingaroa or Taupo plains for fruit culture as I would Mildura land. Of course, the advantages of irrigation will place Mildura far and away ahead of the bulk of sun-baked country in these colonies, where farming, market - gardening and fruit-growing is generally as wild and risky a form of gambling as horse-racing, owing, to the uncertainty of the ciimate. Struggling for a Bare Existence. I can assure you I often marvel to see the-people here struggling away for a bare existence against such difficulties, under such a pitiless sun, upon such an adamant soil, when such country as New Zealand •has—going to waste iri millions of acres—is almost within a stone’s throw of them. What is the use of the richest of soil without an adequate rainfall to maintain a healthy, \igorous growth upon it? It is an every-day arid an everyyear occurrence to see soil which in New Zealand would produce the most luxuriant crop? of grain and roots, producing here only ankle-deep crops of oats or wheat, and that so dried up that it crackles into dust and is driven away by the wind —that is the foliage—while the grain is hardly worth putting stock upon to feed off. It is a heart-breaking climate for a farmer. Often I think, what a pity it is that the whole of the land in these colonies was not kept for sheep runs and -squatters, and the whole of the money and energy sunk in farming put into New Zealand instead. Droughts and Chous. Of course, there are exceptional places with a somewhat better climate, taking it all round, than i? met with generally in Australia, but they are few and far between, and the very best of them suffer greatly under some of the severe droughts which So frequently sweep over these colonies. Look at the average wheat production ot this colony for last year—under eight bushels to the acre. What would be thought of an eight bushel crop in New Zealand ? I had the satisfaction of seeing some of the famous oat-growing land in Southland before coming over here, with a crop growing upon it which afterwards threshed out 120 (one hundred and twenty) bushels per acre. It was, if anything, as much too wet as the bulk of this country is too dry, bub of the two evils give me the too wet. You can drain the wet land, but it is nob so easy to wet the dry. On the latter they think themselves lucky to get one-tenth of the Southland yield, namely, twelve bushels. If they only got Southland prices (oats was then Is 3d per bushel delivered into the railway trucks) they would die of starvation.

From Bad to Worse. The condition of things, too, is getting worse and worse here every year instead of better, as in New Zealand. Land that years ago carried an abundance of native grass good rough feed has become by degrees so sun-baked and hard-trodden that the grass has no chance to make anything like the growth it used when its very density upon the surface kept the soil comparatively moist; and even if it had it has been so frequently severely strained by overstocking when feed lias' been short, literally eaten out of the soil by the very roots, that it is riot there to grow even if the soil was moist and friable,, instead of being, as it generally is, more like a sun-dried brick. Over stocking. 1 The difference is very noticeable along! the railway lines inside, where nothing ever touches the herbage unless it be fire. Inside the railway fences dffie grass and . herbage is most luxuriant, and .you can imagine what the whole country must have appeared like to the early squatters. You can comprehend- what flocks it would carry—what wool it would produce. But look beyond the railway fences, look upon the grazing land of to-day—bare as a billiard ball—look at the hungry-looking bags of skin and bone (everlastingly .on the run in search of a succulent morsel of herbage) called by custom and courtesy “ sheep,” and you cannot help concluding in your own,-mind that.the capabilities of the country are nothing; dike what they must have been years ) ago. Inside the railway fences you have evidence of what the pasture' must have been before, its annihilation by a course of hard grazing find'trampling. Outside the fences you see evidence of the almost absolute arinihila-r tion.of these old grasses. Nothing now could resuscitate them ; nothing can bring them back to their former, condition, and artificial grasses‘will not bear the droughts that' the country is everlastingly:' liable to. •; Of .course it is not so bad everywhere, but everywhere . the 1 condition of the grazing country has deteriorated more or less owing bo the same causes—generally more than’ lesfi.' Fresh’country being opened up has. frorn -time- to time, added to the grazing 'resources available, and more than counterbalanced the falling

off in carrying capabilities of the older land, thus giving an appearance of progress and improvement; but a limit must be reached sooner or later, until at last the freshest of the grazing country will have undergone the common process of spoliation, and be reduced to the common level of impoverishment. New Zealand Facile Princeps. Then will New Zealand come to the fore. Then will her patient, plodding, fern-kill-ing, bonedusting, deep draining farmers reap their reward. Then wiil New Zealand take her legitimate place as the first and be*>t—the most fertile and productive, the most steady-going and durable of th-un all. Only such as know her so thoroughly as I do, who have trudged over her hills and valleys and plains, closely observing their beauties and capabilities, from North Cape to Stewart's Island—who have had such opportunities of measuring her true wealth and comparing it with that of other places, can form a true estimate of the va-t difference between her capabilities, resources and intrinsic worth, and those of any of her sister colonies. The True Basis of National Wealth. After all it is in the productive capabilities, the fertility and durability of the soil, that the true wealth of the county lies, the true security for the repayment of public and private lbans. It Feems to mo all nonsense, holding up New Zealand as a shocking example of reckless borrowing as compared with some of the colonies, because her debt is a few shillings per head greater than that of some other. Does a mortgagee who has lost money on a tract of land look to the number of partners owning the laud, or the intrinsic worth of the land itself? Does he think his position improved if, after lending say £IOO on a piece of land to one man, that man takes a partner, or say nine partners? The liability, it is true, becomes reduced from £BOO per head of the occupants to £SO per head or £lO per head, but the intrinsic value of the real security is not necssarily improved. And this, it seems to me, is what our masters the money-lenders should look to when tendering for our loans—the intrinsic value of tho country at the back of the people who ask for the loan. INT ERCOLONIA L FRE E-TK AD E. If she becomes one of the United States of Australasia, and the ports of all the colonies become free to each other, her fortune is made. They can never compete with her. Their farmers may shut up and migrate to New Zealand at once—and they wifi do so, too, in shoals. She is worth the whole lot of them put together as an agricultural country, and though they may eclipse her in area of rough sheep-carrying, wool-growing country, in capacity for producing the highest class of stock at the lowest cost ancl in the greatest abundance, the whole of them put together cannot approach her. It is climate that does it.

Effects of Hot Winds and Droughts. No soil in the world, however fertile, could stand these terrible droughts. It is not the mere sunshine that does it, for the sun shines just as brilliantly in north New Zealand, but it is the concentrated volume of heated air that, is formed and accumulated upon the millions of acres of sandy desert in the interior, that comes drifting down upon us, sapping up every particle of moisture in its course. There is no evading it, no getting away from it. It drifts leisurely on, pouring its stifling, vitality - sapping, sand - like drift into every recess and crevice, and like hot sand or blotting paper, soaking up every vestige of moisture from everything. They say this season has been the worst they have had for years, but it seems to me there is precious little difference between this and last. Indeed, it seems to me that when it reaches a certain pitch it does not much matter how much further it goes. At a certain point all the moisture is evaporated from everything, and if it went fifty degrees higher it could evaporate no more, or at most a very trilling amount. No amount of irrigation works can cope effectually with the condition of things. At the very moment when' the water- is most needed the supply is most deficient, if not entirely suspended. When an immense extra volume of water is needed to'meet the enoriiiously increased drain caused by the rapid evaporation that goes on in the course of distribution, the very same exhaustive process that is causing the extra strain at the distributing end is also at work upon the sources of supply, causing their gradual contraction, and finally rapid disappearance. Effects,on Plant Life. The soil, puddled into a pasty condition by the flow of water upon its surface, now bakes and cracks; the roots receive an abrupt check just at a point when they most require a regular supply of moisture. Trees and herbage wilt and wither under the perishing heat, 'and if the plant is not killed outright its foliage withers back to a limit of two or three years’ previous growth, and a fresh start has to be made. If the two or three years’ wood that perishes thus is not cutaway, it remains as a monument of the season’s drought. The plant or tree may escape such another scourge for two or three seasons now and recover or make up its perished growth, when another similar experience overtakes it, and it is thrown back nearly as far as, perhaps even farther than ever. ' v , f ,, ;. Everywhere you go through Australia, if you are at all observant, you will see trees in which there is more dead than living wood. At the present time the trees in all the parks not blessed with an abundant water supply are perishing in thousands. Last year it was just the same. Thev may not die right out in every case, but they fall back three or four years. They make three years backward, as it were, for every four years forward, a rate of progress that we in New Zealand would hardly feel satisfied with, but which here they seem quite accustomed to and prepared for. Thissort of thing,occurring so frequently, gives a horrid, half-dead, unprogressive look to nearly all shrubberies and plantations, orchards, and so on that one meets with, that contrasts very strikingly and unfavourably with what one is accustomed to 1 in our own glorious, verdure-clad islands.