The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-06-18 00:00:00

NEW ZEALAND SHEEP- KINGS.

The Colonies and India remarks that the following
return of sheep (taken from the Government Gazette
for Canterbury and Otago, New Zealand), gives an
idea of the vast flocks owned by single individuals in
the Australasian colonies :—New Zealand and
Australian Land Company, 300,000 sheep; Mr.
Robert Campbell, 336,000 sheep; Mr. George Henry
Moore, 90,000 sheep; Messrs, palgetty and Co.,
208,000 sheep; Messrs. Clifford and Wald, 89,000
cheep; Sir Dillon Bell, 82,000 sheep; Hon. William
Robins(*) 68,000 sheep; Sir Cracroft Wilson, 48,000
sheep; Ur, Kitchen, 80,000 sheep; Mr. Allan
M'Lean, 500,000 sheep,

In noticing the above, The Standard, in !I, leader, re-
marks:—
In the three islands of that colony (New Zealand)
there are over twelve million sheep, and in Tasmania
and Australia proper it is estimated that, exclusive of
other stock, there are over sixty-one million fleeces to
be clipped every year. In other words, our colonists
at the Antipodes, who, less than a century ago,
owned only twenty-nine sheep, and were often hard
pressed for a dinner, are now the proprietors of twine
as many sheep as there are in the iKhole of the British
Island. Even these abundant flocks do not constitute
the sole wealth of the three millions of colonists, since,
apart from lands, and houses, end gold, their official
statistics record with pride that last year Australasia
contained within its bounds over seven million eatle,
eight hundred and fifteen thousand pigs, and over a
million horses.
To the Briton accustomed to estimate space on a
small scale these figures convey the idea of a continent
white with fleeces, of endless pastures noisy with
bleating sheep, of a lare4 weary with washing wool
and freighting it along rutty roads to remote
sea ports, It is difficult, even after arriving
in Australia, to get quite rid of this sort of
ideas imbibed 14 the Old Country." In Mel-
bourne the visitor Uncle that the talk is of wool, and
if it is occasionally varied by eafeeefeces to reefs, and
gedlies, and gold, yet the quarrels of the "free
selectowe " and the squatters form the staple of Poli-
tical discussion, In South Australia the "cockatoos"
and their wheat cecpe relieve the monotony of the
conversation, though even there the man who
" handles " twenty thousand sheep refArs contemp-
tuously to the mere tiller of the soil, and is supported
in his pretensions by the deference paid to hire by the
merchant from whom he buys hie stores, or the banker
who finds him funds against the settling day with the
wool-broker. In Queensland, there is a good deal
hefted at hotel tables about sugar and " blackbirds ; "
and in New South Wales about coal and copper. But
in the Riverina and the Darling Downs, over the end-
less bush of Western Australia, and fn that arid No-
Man's-Land north of Godyer's Line, snoop rifle all.
Yet the tourist is astonished, after riding mile after
mile through a great sheep run, at the rarity of a
sheep • and his astonishment springs from the fact
that he forgets the ziKo of the land he is in, and the
poverty of the soil. In places where rain is abun-
dant, and artificial grasses have taken the plane of the
native herbage, something approaching an English
clown may indeed, be seen. But in the bush pure and
simple, the scant feed supports life so sparingly that
if one sheep es,n subsist on two acres of land the
squatter has every reason to congratulate himself on
the "run " which ke owns, or cf Which he is a Crown
tenant.