The Argus at KellyGang 21/6/1880 (3)
No one will dispute the opinion that a selector to thrive well ought to have capital both to fence and plough and to buy stock. As soon as the land is enclosed, and the trees rung, grass begins to grow plentifully. On the second day out we saw abundance of grass, and no stock to eat it. The Crown lands bailiff was quite distressed by this waste. If the selector could have put 200 sheep on his land, a plentiful supply of herbage would have been converted into wool and mutton. It was not until we fell in with men who had begun with £500 or £600 that we found small flocks of sheep or herds of cattle. There are what may be called amateur farmers in the Benalla district - men who have made money in business in Melbourne, Ballarat, or Geelong and are now settled down on 320 acres of land, where they hope to spend their life pleasantly and quietly, and mike a moderate profit out of their considerable capital. Persons of this class, able to build substantial houses, to lay down wooden floors and actually introduce carpets, tables, chairs and pianos into their rooms, must find the occupation of a farmer agreeable, when the soil is good (as most of the Benalla district is), and the climate agreeable It is only in the midst of summer that the heat can be complained of.
This heat is both discomforting to the selector and injurious to the dairy. Even in under ground rooms milk will not keep in the hot weather. A large quantity of fresh butter is prepared for the Melbourne market in spring. Owners of spring carts go from place to place and buy small quantities from housewives at 9d and l0d a lb then take the butter to Benalla and forward it to town by rail. Some of the butter is excellent. It is a pity that none can be made in summer. During the hot weeks many housewives make cheese and get 6d a lb for it from the spring cart men. Last week the price of butter was quoted at 5d a 1b at a farm 20 miles from Benalla.
Selectors have come from all parts of the colony to the Benalla district. Two brothers from Lancefield have made a good start. They live in well built houses and are equipped with a complete stock of machinery. Each has about 70 acres of land ploughed - this is their third year - and they obtained fine crops last harvest. In the opinion of one of the brothers a selector ought not to begin with less than £1,000. Both had got their land enclosed with substantial fences, and a great deal of ground cleared. The difficulty they had to overcome was the scarcity of water.
The western portion of the Benalla district is traversed by four or five large creeks, which in wet seasons flood the flats and in summer shrink to lines of disconnected pools or dry up altogether. To the enterprise of the squatters the farmers owe the existence of several useful dams, but for which selection could not have been carried on in certain dry localities. No one now seems to build dams, and water is often hard to get. The construction of reservoirs is a work which will have to be undertaken by the local bodies. The creeks, in recently occupied territory, are all excluded from selection, and care has been taken by the Lands department to provide numerous reserves. Last week we came upon a group of selectors who had to drive their horses and stock two and three miles to the creek for water every day. The efforts some of them had made to store water in tanks had only been partly successful. The time lost in carting water for domestic purposes and in driving stock to and from the creek must be considerable.
The owners of threshing machines know as much about the condition of the selectors as the storekeepers. Well to do farmers make a good deal of money (in prosperous seasons, when cash is plentiful) threshing corn for their neighbours. According to the story they all tell just now, there is very little money in the district. They are all owed a number of debts. One man said that he had £100 to receive for threshing done last harvest, and had no hope of getting it in until next autumn. Some debts had been owing since the year before the rust. The uniform charge for the use of the machine was ls. a bag. In addition, the farmer had to pay wages to the men filling the bags, arranging the straw, &.c. Meeting a member of the local farmers' union on the road one day, we stopped to ask him how selection was getting on. He took a hopeful view of the prospects of the selectors generally. It appeared that he owned a threahing machine, and went a good deal amongst the small farmers. He was owed a lot of money, but expected to get it all in time. After the late harvest he was paid up many accounts which had been due for two years. In the same way he expected to receive next autumn a large portion of the debts now outstanding. By ascertaining what the results of the late harvest were, it may be possible to find a means of measuring the elect of the future of the crops the year before.
During the present autumn, the quantity of wheat delivered at the Benalla railway station has been 90,000 bags. It is estimated that this will be increased by 30,000 bags. With the view of ascertaining what proportion tins quantity bore to the total produce of the district, the Crown lands bailiff was asked to show on the map what localities the Benalla supply came from. He drew his finger round an area amounting to about a fourth of the whole district. It appears that much grain is carted to Sheppaton, and a considerable quantity to Wangaratta. Let it be assumed that the product of the whole Benalla district last harvest amounted to at least 360,000 bags, valued at £216,000. The extent of land under crop the previous year was probably a fourth less. If that crop instead of proving a total failure had yielded an average quantity of wheat, there would have been a sum of £150,000 for distribution throughout the district. But the harvest brought in no results, so it is not surprising that there should have been severe distress in 1879, and still considerable distress in 1880.
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