Page:Advanced Australia.djvu/50

 five bushels to the acre; but where the average production is considerably more than that, for the colony comprises a very large area of splendid wheat-growing land. The cheap system of cultivation and harvesting which is carried on enables the farmer to make good profits from light crops. The land is more fertile than, and as easily tilled as, the prairies of Western America, while a cheaper system of harvesting is adopted. The peculiar dryness of the air enables the stripper, which is a combined reaping and threshing machine; to be used, while on the American prairies the grain has to be reaped, bound, stooked, carted and threshed. There is no winter such as is known in Europe; but May to September are practically the spring, and October, November and December the summer or harvest months. The drawback to production is the deficient or uncertain rainfall. A great deal of the northern territory is sterile, uninviting desert, which will possibly never be of any service; but there are also great breadths of pastoral and agricultural land; and the tapping in recent years of vast stores of artesian water in the northern parts of Queensland and South Australia gives hopes that, in a not distant future, the periodical Australian droughts will be deprived of their terrors, for the farmers will be able to keep their cattle and sheep alive. Already in Queensland there are bores sunk which give a total flow of artesian water of upwards of 200,000,000 gallons per day, and authorities speak of the supply as being practically inexhaustible. Great rivers sink almost away in the interior plains; for instance, it is said that the Darling River carries into the Murray only one-sixteenth of the water which it receives in its course. In the discovery and use of these subterranean resources lies one of the greatest hopes for the future development of the vast central area of Australia.