Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/89

 over in charge of the stock originally brought from Van Dieman's Land and Sydney at the first settlement of the colony, and many have since followed them. As a body, they are a daring, energetic, hard-working class of men, with a considerable fear of infringing the law, or at least of the consequences of being made amenable to it, but at the same time requiring a strict hand to keep them in order, as it is part of their system to impose (or as they term it to try it on) whenever they have a chance of success, which of course is most likely with new settlers. If the first encroachment succeeds, they try another, thus trying it on until, if unchecked, they establish a system very much calculated for their own comfort and convenience, but by no means conducive to their masters' interests. They are generally well acquainted with splitting, building, fencing, and bushwork of all kinds; and from their experience in woodcraft, and their knowledge of the resources and expedients of which a man may avail himself, or to which he may have recourse in the bush, were of the greatest service, if not actually indispensable, to the first settlers in occupying a new country. With respect to sheep management, there is a great difference between the Sydney and Van Dieman's Land old hands. In Van Dieman's Land, the sheep are all reared in enclosed paddocks or fields as in England, and the sheep farmers there never attempt the thorough eradication of scab, contenting themselves with merely keeping it down, as it is called, and from the circumstance of the sheep not being enclosed in hurdles at night or fed in flocks during the day, it does not spread with the same rapidity or