Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/200

 the inhabitants in the rural districts of New South Wales are engaged in tending sheep, cattle, and vineyards, it will be long before the comparatively small number of agriculturists in that colony grow more wheat than is equal to the consumption; although the great advance which has been made during the last eight years in our knowledge of the more distant parts of the territory of New South Wales has established the fact, that we possess in that colony, millions of acres of rich land, situated in districts unvisited by the droughts so prevalent in New Holland, watered by numerous rivers, with good harbours, and capable of producing enough grain for a population fifty times greater than the present one. Among the finest wheat districts in the territory of New South Wales are the fertile plains, of vast extent, which are situated among the ramifications of the Australian Alps, or Warragong mountains, which attain an altitude of 7000 feet above the level of the sea, and are capped by eternal snow. The squatters, who have formed stations on these plains, speak highly of the wheat they grow for the use of their establishments; wheat having always been with them a certain and abundant crop. Gipps Land, between these mountains and the sea, is also a most fertile region, possessing a vast level tract of the richest soil in one large block. In the settled parts of New South Wales, the extensive plains, in the fertile county of Argyle, have long yielded crops of wheat quite equal to Van