Journal of an expedition into the interior of tropical Australia, in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria / By Sir T.L. Mitchell.

  • Mitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone), 1792-1855.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Journal of an expedition into the interior of tropical Australia, in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria / By Sir T.L. Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/502 (page 11)
    tained water in abundance, and was said to flow into the Macquarie, in which case the Bogan can have but few sources in Hervey’s Bange. The station beside which we had encamped, com¬ prised a stock yard, and had been formerly a cattle station belonging to Mr. Kite. It was now a sheep station of Dr. Ramsay’s, and there was another sheep station a mile and a half from it, along the road I had examined. Thus the country suitable for either kind of stock is taken up by the gradual encroach¬ ment of sheep on cattle runs, not properly such. This easily takes place — as where sheep feed, cattle will not remain, and sheep will fatten where cattle would lose flesh. Fortunately, however, for the holders of the latter description of stock, there are limits to this kind of encroachment. The plains to the westward of these ranges afford the most nutritive pasturage in the world for cattle, and they are too flat and subject to inundations to be desirable for sheep. A zone of country of this description lies on the interior side of the ranges, as far as I have examined them. It is watered by the sources of the rivers Goulburn, Ovens, Murray, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Bogan, Macquarie, Castlereagh, Nammoy, Peel, Gwydir, and Darling ; on which rivers the runs will always make cattle fat. There are two shrubs palpably salt, and, perhaps, there is something salso- laceous in the herbage also on which cattle thrive so well; and the open plains and muddy waterholes are their delight. Excessive drought, however, may occa¬ sionally reduce the owners of such stock to great extremities, and subject them to serious loss. The Acacia pendula, a tree whose habitat is limited and re¬ markable, is much relished by the cattle. It is found