The free selector's landscape: Moulding the Victorian farming districts, 1870–1915

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Notes

1. ‘Report of Proceedings Taken Under the Land Act, 1869, During the Year Ending 31st December 1872’, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1873, Vol. 3, paper 87.

2. Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria, 1915–1938 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 12–13.

3. Bruce Davidson, European Farming in Australia: An Economic History of Australian Farming (Amsterdam: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1981), p. 67.

4. Donald Meinig, On the Margins of the Good earth: The South Australian Wheat Frontier, 1869–1884 (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1962), pp. 120–121.

5. See Richard Broome's article in this issue.

6. The classic account of the pastoral frontier in Victoria is Margaret Kiddle, Men of Yesterday: A Social History of the Western District of Victoria, 1834–1890 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1961).

7. For the early land acts see J. M. Powell, The Public Lands of Australia Felix (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1970).

8. Statistical Register of Victoria (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1891).

9. For section 42 see Powell, Public Lands, pp. 126–127. For an account of early agriculture in Victoria, see Lynnette J. Peel, Rural Industry in the Port Phillip Region, 1835–1880 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1974).

10. Diary of Joseph Jenkins, 19 April 1871, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 13267, State Library of Victoria [SLV]. An edited version of the diary of Jenkins was published in 1975. This was a very poor rendering of the diary and it is more a summary than a carefully abridged work. See, William Evans (ed.), Diary of a Welsh Swagman, 1869–1894 (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1975).

11. Free selection permitted settlers to take up land prior to survey. Earlier acts had restricted settlement to designated surveyed areas.

12. This account is based on the diaries of Anne Catherine Currie, Australian Manuscripts Collection, MS 10886, SLV. The diary was commenced by John Currie in March 1873 but Anne Catherine (Kate) took it over in September 1873. Apart from periods of illness, she continued the diary up until her death in 1908.

13. For a brief description of the Gippsland, Victorian Year-Book (Melbourne: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Victorian Office, 1981), p. 340.

14. For the first three years on the Currie selections see the lease applications on their selection files. Victorian Public Records Office VPRS 626/P0/1557/299 and 300. All of the files in this parish have been examined. For clearing in Gippsland see Land of the Lyre Bird (Korumburra: Shire of Korumburra for the South Gippsland Development League, 1966), pp. 16–76.

15. The Curries sold their Ballan block for £583. See, Currie Diary, 21 October 1875.

16. Anne Catherine Currie diary, 13 February 1877.

17. Ibid., 29 January 1879.

18. The number of farmers in each county is taken from the Victoria Census, Occupations of the People, 1881 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1881).

19. For an assessment of the pre-farming vegetation of the Wimmera see Lisa A. Morcom and Matin E. Westbrooke, ‘The Pre-Settlement Vegetation of the Western and Central Plains of Victoria, Australia’, Australian Geographical Studies, iii/36, November 1998, pp. 273–288.

20. Selection file John Harfull, Victorian Public Records Office VPRS 626/P0/1113/19.20. This discussion is based on an examination of all the files from the parishes of Kalkee and Jung Jung.

21. Although many of these survived well into the twentieth century, they are now rare.

22. See Victoria Year-Book (1981), p. 337.

23. This observation is based on an examination of parish plans and selection files from across the plains.

24. I am grateful to Jenny Botcher of the Cohuna Historical Society for granting me access to the diaries of Thomas Craige.

25. John Sweeney selection file, Victorian Public Records Office VPRS 626/P0/423/3745/19.20. All the files in the parish of Baulkamaugh and the adjoining Katunga have been examined.

26. Victoria Census, ‘Occupations of the People’, 1881 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1881).

27. Based on an analysis of Mallee selection files.

28. The diaries and accounts of Charles William Coote are held by the University of Melbourne Archives, A.1964.0005.

29. G. J. R. Linge, Industrial Awakening: A Geography of Australian Manufacturing, 1788 to 1890 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979), pp. 174–176.

30. John Sweeney notes Australian Manuscript Collection, Box 332/6 MS 6668, State Library of Victoria. This is a typescript which appears to be compiled from his journal after he retired from farming. It is sometimes written in the past tense and sometimes in the present tense.

31. Currie Diary, 8 April, 1878.

32. Currie Diary, 9 July, 1880.

33. Greg S. J. Brinsmead, ‘1888 — Turning point in the Victoria Dairy Industry’, Australia 1888, v, September 1980, pp. 67–79.

34. Letter dated 13 October 1879, John Sweeney, selection file.

35. Sweeney Journal.

36. This observation is based on research being undertaken with probate inventories.

37. For the changes in farming technology see Charles Fahey, ‘Moving North: Technological Change, Land Holding and the Development of Agriculture in Northern Victoria, 1870–1914’ in Alan Mayne (ed.), Beyond the Black Stump, Histories of Outback Australia (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2008), pp. 179–209.

38. Sweeney Journal.

39. Selection files VPRS 626/P000/1143/2761/19.20, VPRS 626/P000/1143/2760/19.20, VPRS 626/P000/1115/903/19.20 and VPRS 626/P000/1114/892/19.20. The Ingleton family has been traced through birth, death and marriage records and the Wimmera Shire Rate Book, 1891, VPRS9703/P1/14.

40. Lionel Frost has looked at these developments in his ground-breaking thesis ‘Victorian Agriculture and the Role of Government’ (PhD thesis: Monash University, 1983), pp. 101–134.

41. Sweeney Journal.

42. Lionel Frost, ‘The Correll Family and Technological Change in Australian Agriculture’, Agricultural History, ii/75, 2001, pp. 217–241.

43. Horsham Times, 5 May 1911, p. 3.

44. More work is needed on the survival of native pastures well into the twentieth century.

45. See, for example, the ‘Journal of James Harris James of Jarklin, 1890–1897’, in the possession of the East Loddon Historical Society Inc., Mitiamo, Victoria. In the 1890s a common pastime was shooting and trapping rabbits. I am grateful to the Loddon Historical Society for a copy of the James Journal.

46. Descriptions of late nineteenth and early twentieth century farms can be found in probate inventories. These are now digitized and can be consulted on the Victorian Public Records Home Page. Hard copies can be found at VPRS 28/P2.

47. John Currie probate inventory, Victorian Public Records Office VPRS/P2/587/79/993.

48. Maurice Rothberg, ‘Victorian Dairy Farming: A Social Survey’ (PhD thesis: University of North Carolina, 1948), p. 195. This thesis contains a wealth of detail on Victoria dairying in the mid-twentieth century.

49. Dairy herd sizes were calculated from parish returns, which list the number of farms engaged primarily in cultivation, pastoralism and dairying. Non-dairying properties were assumed to have three cows for home consumption. For dairy farms, the average number of cows milked in Traralgon was 17, 16 in Mirboo South, 24 in Wonga Wonga, 25 in Korrumburra and 29 in Leongatha. These figures were calculated from the ‘Parish Returns Agricultural Statistics’, Australian Archives, CRS MP 570/6 and 7.

50. Parish level statistics demonstrate that machine milking was rare before the 1930s.

51. Elwood Mead, ‘Problems in Irrigation Development’, Journal of Agriculture Victoria, Vol. VII, 1909, pp. 490–491.

52. For the problems of closer and soldier settlers’ estates see Jacqueline C. Coucill-Hope, ‘Back on Track: The Closer Settlement Scheme in Victoria’ (PhD thesis: La Trobe University, 2004). For a harrowing account of problems confronted by soldier settlers see Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope.