A VISIT TO THE WESTERN GOLDFIELDS.
BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER
No. 41.
We are again upon the road, and now turn our back upon the golden regions of the West,
which terminate at Frederick's Valley; our way lays to the southward, over the plateau
nearly 3000 feet above the coast level. Here undulating hills, broad slopes; and winding
plains, stretch from the base of the Canobolas to the verge of the horizon, and rich grasses,
now frosted and withered, and heavy open timber, are an evidence of the deep trappean
soil under which the rocks of both ridge and plain are concealed. Here and there the
summit of some low hill displays the wreck of its iron crest but as you proceed they
become more and more rare. The monotony of the forest is occasionally relieved by
straggling patches of cultivation, of the rudest kind, enclosed by a fence of logs and
brushwood, piled up to the height of three or four feet, which have been collected from
the cleared spaces; in the centre, or at one corner within the enclosure, stands a bark
hovel, with a pile of stones, and sods, and rubbish, at one end, from the chinks of which
the smoke creeping out gives the only evidence of occupation; a few posts and saplings in
the neighbourhood represent a stock-yard, near to it stands a dray sheltering two or three
famine-stricken dogs; and a little further off is a diminutive wheat stack, which with a
few working bullocks, and perhaps an old brood mare, constitutes the whole worldly
wealth of the owner -- one of that class generally designated as little settlers. I might
proceed to describe an interior, but it would be hardly fair. I can only say that it is in
perfect keeping with the outside, and that the people here are of the same opinion as the
poet, when he sang
At this season of the year the nights and mornings are intensely cold, and the frosts are
severe. Keen and chilling blasts drive over the flats, often accompanied by a drizzling
sleet, and snow storms are not unfrequent; but the snow seldom lays more than a few
hours on the ground. Dark November-looking mornings, with their cold, grey, leaden,
misty sky, shrouds nature in one wide-spread gloom. These are succeeded by several
hours of bright sunshine, when the fleeting shadows chase each other over vale and
mountain, and then comes evening and sunset. How the houseless traveller who
traverses these hyperborean regions during the long winter months, with no other shelter
than his blanket, hates the setting sun; for then comes night, and bitter piercing cold, and
frost, and chill and cutting winds come wailing through the forest. Then by the side of his
lonely fire he watches the Southern cross, to mark how the tedious hours wear away, and
he notes the bright silvery clouds as they flit over the moon, and listens to the shrieks of
the opossums, and the chattering of the flying squirrels, and the solemn hootings of the
night owl, and the howlings of the dingo, and a hundred other indescribable shrieks and
noises -- for night is the time when the denizens of an Australian forest are astir, they
revel in the bright moonshine and sleep all day long. And at last the moon sinks behind
the forest, and the noises cease, and the cold becomes more intense, and the stars fade
one by one, and a streak of misty light appears on the eastern edge of the forest, and
every moment it deepens and mounts higher into the sky, and then he scrapes the embers
of his fire together, and piles as many logs upon it as will take a good two hours to burn
out, and then it is broad daylight; the dreariest hour of darkness has passed, the hour
before break of day, and he rolls himself in his blanket, and, stretched on the green turf
before his fire, sleeps until the chatter of the birds and the glare of the sun two hours high
awakes him to the labours of another day.
Ten miles from Frederick's Valley you reach the Church and School lands intersected by
Brown's Creek, and pass the neat residence of Mr. P. Slattery. The country now descends
by successive steppes, and the road conducts you across the holdings of two or three
tenants of the Church and Schools, who have a comparatively large breadth under
cultivation. This property is leased at an annual rent of from £6 to £8 a section, for
periods of seven years, renewable for twenty-one years at the option of the tenant. Much
of this land is of a very superior quality, and the terms on which it is rented are liberal in
the extreme, as the annual fee does not exceed 1½ per cent, on the present value. The fall
now becomes rapid, the schists gradually reappear, and seven miles from the last farm,
rising from behind a pile of hills, Mount Macquarie towers up before you with its long
unbroken hue of crests stretching to the eastward.
Descending upon Belabula Creek, a large stream where the indications of gold and
copper become again distinct, but where there has been no gold-digging as yet, you cross
the creek, which is a beautiful clear ever-flowing stream, and ascend a mountain on the
opposite bank by a winding road; a mile's journey brings you to the summit, when you
look down upon the pretty compact little town of Carcoar, in a deep glen at the base of
Mount Macquarie, watered by the Belabula, The town appears to great advantage,
occupying the narrow little alluvial flat on both sides of the stream, and climbing up the
steep side of the opposite hill, The situation is most picturesque; it wants but a mineral
spring, and a dozen or two of donkeys, to make it a fashionable watering place another
Malvern Hills. Something of the former kind is said to exist on the top of the big
mountain.
As a commercial town the position of Carcoar is fatal to its prosperity. Encompassed by
mountains, no person can arrive at the town, or depart from it, without descending or
climbing a succession of steep hills, and the ranges by which it is encircled, however
beautiful to look at, are utterly worthless for agriculture, or even for pastoral occupation.
Descending now into the gorge, you pass a handsome first-class hotel, confronted by one
of the three stores of which the town boasts, and then a steam flour mill, shut up on the
principle of no competition and then comes one of the finest wooden bridges of its size in
this or any other country, which, passing over, you are alongside of another steam flour
mill in, full operation. Here is, the second store, and the third is a little higher up on the
flat. You now arrive at three public houses in a cluster; beyond this is a small square, in
the centre of which is a neat brick-built court-house, and on, the opposite side the
National school; also a capacious brick building, and a lock-up near the bridge. You now
follow the Bathurst road up a steep ascent, and have on one hand an elegant parsonage in
the Elizabethan style, and on the other a pretty Gothic church, with a square tower, but no
steeple the sites of both are chosen with singular good taste, and it is these two buildings
that create such a pleasing effect at the first glimpse of the town obtained from the
opposite hill. Higher up, on an artificial level formed by the outlay of a small fortune, so
as to enable wheeled conveyances to stop before his door in their descent, stands
Mulrowney's new hotel. Many of the streets are laid out on slopes, at an angle of thirty
degrees, and the buildings already noticed, with a few cottages clinging to the sides of the
hills, comprise the town, which if well situated, would be now the centre of a large
commercial population.
A strange fatality seems to have attended the selection of the town sites on the frontiers of
the settled districts. Here is Carcoar at the bottom of a hole, while within three miles are
fertile plains, on the Belabula, of vast extent, and a level country extending from thence
to the Murrumbidgee almost unoccupied; and then there is Burrendong, in a slate desert,
amongst rocks and ridges; and Douglas on the top of an inaccessible waterless mountain
beyond the Lachlan; and Binnelong, also in a desert of crags and precipices, with a deep
rocky ravine, winding in and out of the main street about forty times. A Government
surveyor has been employed at this latter place for the last nine months, vainly
endeavouring to improve the original plan, but his is a bootless task, for he can neither
remove rocks or mountains, or precipices. In the neighbourhood of all those places good
sites exist, but these sites have now become private property under pre-emptive claims.
The laying out of these townships has been admirably designed with the view of checking
an inconvenient increase of the population on the borders of the unsettled districts,
beyond those necessary to carry on the road traffic. No man who has his bread to earn by
his industry, and had a market to seek for the produce of that industry, would ever dream
in his sober senses of settling in one of these picturesque deserts, -- the people have
asked for bread and have been offered a stone.
Leaving Carcoar by the same road you entered it, after crossing two neat bridges, you
arrive at rich level plain's on the banks of the Belabula, and at two miles distance from
the town pass the handsome residence of Mr. C. Icely, half-concealed amidst a mass of
foliage half-a-mile from the road, and three miles further you cross the last bridge, when
turning to the left, for eighteen miles the road conducts you over a fertile undulating
country, lightly timbered, badly watered, and uninhabited. On either side distant ranges
stretch to the westward, and the cloud-capped Canobolas are still visible; but, far to the
eastward, the soil is now of the richest quality, and descending all the way you arrive at
Ellerslie, or the Old Sheet of Bark, where a tract of land has been purchased at £5 an acre,
and a first-class stone house has been built, shortly to be opened as an hotel by Mr. Isaac
White. The soil is here a red loam, mixed with granitic sand. Twelve miles further,
passing a solitary shepherd's hut, you reach an outburst of coarse granite, the soil here
becomes light and sandy, when three miles further brings you to the beautifully situated
village of Cowra, on the green banks of the Lachlan. The ground surrounding this village,
on the eastern bank, is unimproved and in the hands of pastoral proprietors. The western
bank is the commencement of the unsettled districts; then broad plains of unrivalled
fertility stretch for many miles up and down the river. They extend back some 15 or 20
miles, and are at present unalienated, being held under pastoral leases, and very lightly
stocked. It is said that however inviting this country may appear, the excessive droughts
of summer would render agricultural pursuits hazardous and uncertain. The entire plains
for fifty miles at a stretch could be irrigated by a single dam. The farmers on the eastern
bank, a few miles above Cowra, appear to find no difficulty in raising crops that will
compare favourably with the produce of any other part of the colony. A bridge over the
Lachlan at Cowra would open up the best road in New South Wales, connecting Bathurst,
via Marengo, with the Muriumbidgee and from thence, with the Southern districts and
Victoria, the greater part of' the route would pass over a level country, much of which is
fertile, richly grassed, well-timbered, and suitable for the establishment of towns and
agricultural villages: however, surface water is scarce over some portion of the district,
but it can be obtained almost everywhere on the plains at an average depth of 20 feet.
Cowra contains six public-houses, of various grades, including some of the highest class,
the foundation of a Catholic chapel, an excellent National school, two good stores, a post-
office, and a very few cottages. The natural beauties of the situation are of a high order,
and from its position it promises to become, at some future day, a place of considerable
importance. Some six or seven miles up the river, which flows from the southward, small
farms are to be seen on the eastern bank, and from this point they follow the course of the
permanent creeks, and are to be found scattered up and down the winding valleys
extending to Goulburn. Flour mills are situated within a reasonable distance of each other,
and the supply of agricultural produce is not yet in excess of the consumption of the
district.
Concerning the people who inhabit these parts I shall say a few words in my next.