Australia, The Dairy CountryAustralia. Department of External Affairs
Science
Australia, The Dairy Country
Australia. Department of External Affairs
Dairying -- Australia
F. T. A. FRICKE, Esq.,
Land and Immigration Agent for Victoria,
687 Market Street, San Francisco.
IN LONDON:
The High Commissioner for
THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA,
72 Victoria Street, Westminster, London, S.W.
IN AUSTRALIA:
THE SECRETARY,
DEPARTMENT OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS,
Collins and Spring Streets, Melbourne.
The suitability of Australia as a country for the dairyman is referred
to in the report of the Scottish Agricultural Commission,[A] who toured
the States of the Commonwealth in 1910-11, in the following terms:--
[Illustration: An up-to-date Milking Yard.]
"The practice of dairying, in a limited domestic sense, as applied
to the milking of a few cows and the making of a little butter and
cheese for family use, is as old as the history of mankind, and in
that restricted meaning dairying has been carried on in Australia
since the arrival of the first settlers. But the industry as
existing there to-day is a vastly different matter, being already
of great importance, and promising rapid and extensive development.
It is a young industry, so recently out of its infancy that if this
report had been written fifteen years ago the section on dairying
might have been almost as brief as the famous chapter on snakes in
Ireland.
[Illustration: Cream Carts at the Factory.]
"The live stock brought to Sydney by Captain Phillip in 1788, and
sent to propagate their kind at Farm Cove, consisted of one bull,
four cows, one calf, and seven pigs. Their descendants in 1908
included about ten and a-half millions of cattle, of which nearly
two millions were dairy cows. This is about one cow for every two
persons in the Commonwealth, which seems a large proportion, but as
it means only one cow for every two square miles in Australia,
there is ample room for expansion. In Great Britain we have about
twenty-six cows for every square mile, and only one cow for every
fifteen people. These figures indicate that in proportion to its
population Australia is much more of a dairying country than Great
Britain, but that in proportion to its area, it has developed the
industry much less extensively, and is still capable of making
enormous growth. Until within comparatively recent years there was
little dairying anywhere in the Commonwealth, and what little there
was appears to have been carried on by somewhat primitive methods.
Modern developments, the spread of scientific knowledge, the
fostering care of Government, and, above everything, the advent of
the separator, of the milking machine, and of the freezer have
changed all that. To-day the industry is prospering and full of
promise....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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