An Autobiography by Catherine Helen Spence

Before leaving Scotland I arranged that my friend, Mrs. Graham of the strenuous life and 30 pounds a year, should undertake the care of my aunts, to their mutual satisfaction. My last days in England were spent in either a thick London fog or an equally undesirable Scotch mist, which shrouded everything in obscurity, and made me long for the sunny skies and the clear atmosphere of Australia. I told my friends that in my country it either rained or let it alone. Indeed, the latest news from all Australia was that it had let it alone very badly, and that the overstocking of stations during the preceding good seasons had led to enormous losses. Sheepfarmers made such large profits in good seasons that they were apt to calculate that it was worth while to run the risk of drought; but experience has shown that overstocking does not really pay.

The making of dams, the private and public provision of water in the underground reservoirs by artesian bores, and the facilities for travelling stock by such ways have all lessened the risks which the pioneer pastoralists ran bravely in the old days. An Australian drought can never be as disastrous in the twentieth century as it was in 1866; and South Australia, the Central State, has from the first been a pioneer in development as well as in exploration. The hum of the reaping machine first awoke the echoes in our wheatfields. The stump-jumping plough and the mullenicer which beats down the scrub or low bush so that it can be burnt, were South Australian inventions, copied elsewhere, which have turned land accounted worthless into prolific wheat fields.