Old Melbourne Memories: Second Edition, RevisedBoldrewood, Rolf
History
Old Melbourne Memories: Second Edition, Revised
Boldrewood, Rolf
Frontier and pioneer life -- Australia -- Melbourne (Vic.); Victoria -- Description and travel; Victoria -- Social life and customs
Terenallum was in early days the property of Messrs. Lang and Elms, who
considered it a fairly paying sheep run, though bare of timber and
rather desolate of aspect. Disadvantageously for the firm, as it turned
out, Mr. Elms, the resident partner, was tempted by what was then
thought to be a high price--12s. per head or so, with about one-third of
the stock it afterwards carried--to sell to Mr. Russell of The Leigh. He
invested in a presumably richer country between The Grange and the
Eumeralla, and, I should think, never ceased to regret the exchange. The
new runs were chiefly cattle country, being well-grassed forest, not
over dry in winter, and therefore in those days looked upon as liable to
foot-rot. The eastern subdivision, called "Lyne," was at no great
distance from Mr. Cox's Werrongourt station. This transaction
illustrates the errors of judgment so often made by pioneer squatters,
men of exceeding shrewdness and energy notwithstanding. So George
Wyndham Elms sold Terenallum, now proverbially one of the most valuable
sheep properties west of the Barwon, and purchased a run which must have
paid indifferent interest on capital for long afterwards. Yet the seller
was sufficiently experienced, could work with both hands and head, had
confronted all the regulation pioneer troubles--bad shepherds, blacks,
low wool, everything--had shepherded on a pinch, and slept in a
watch-box. Then, when all was well and a fortune coming to meet him, he
was fated to ruin everything for the sake of change. _Mais, telle est la
vie._
Lyne and the other station were good enough, fairly watered, splendidly
grassed, and so on; but the cautious critics said they would never make
up for Terenallum. And they didn't.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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