Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/201

 Diemen's Land wheat; fifty bushels to the acre being of frequent occurrence. At present, however, only enough wheat is grown in this fine district to supply its thinly scattered population, for the land carriage to Sydney would be so long, that it would be impossible to grow it for that distant market. Port Philip is also a very good wheat country. The exuberant richness of the district of Illawarra is well known; shut in by an abrupt, densely wooded range of mountains it has never suffered from those severe droughts which have often visited the counties of Camden and Cumberland. The northern part of the territory of New South Wales, already described in the first part of this work, is not certainly so well adapted for wheat as the southern parts of the colony, but then it yields large and certain crops of maize, millet, &c. besides which its climate and soil are well suited for the growth of rice and various productions of the tropics.

Experience has proved in Australia, that the only districts in which one may be assured of exemption from drought, are those where the chains of mountains attain a very great elevation, and throw off numerous lofty ranges extending to the sea coast; their formation, also, being of a nature favourable to