MILDURA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2659, 27 July 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

MILDURA.

The Melbourne Telegraph in reference to an official visit to the irrigation settlement on the Murray says—Here, at tho distance of somo 500 miles from Melbourne, science, courage, and cash has planted in the heart of what was once a waste the germs of properous settlements, and of new and most hopeful industries. Messrs ChafEey have expended at Mildura an enormous amount of money ; but tho expenditure has been on scientific and practical lines and oven at this early stage in the enterprise the results are risible and assured. In what was yesterday a patch of mallee scrub, worthless to many kind, and tenanted only by the dingo and the wallaby, we have to-day a picturesque township, belted with spring orchards with a Stato school of 135 children, a coffee palace iu course of erection at a cost of over £4090, several churches, a local paper, handsome villas, and all based on agriculture fed by perfect scientific methods of irrigation. Nearly a thousand people are settled round Mildura, and their spirit is declared to be one of contentment with tho present, and of hopo for tho future The third great opportunity in our history is "•iven to us by the new policy of irriga-

tion, a policy which weds the waters now running to wasto in a hundred rivers to the parched plains whoro tho harvests droop for the lack of moisture, and which will give us not only a hundred ears of wheat for every one we grow now, but a

hundred new products for every one we posseß3 now. In this new and hopeful policy of irrigation it is our good fortuno to have a distinct lead, and our future depends upon maintaining that load.