Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/195

suppose that the farmer has every year fifty acres of it in wheat, and fifty acres in maize, with a secondary crop on part of the ground after the maize is harvested, of swede turnips, sugar-loaf cabbages, &c. which might be sold to the cow-keepers in Sydney. Much diversity of opinion prevails with regard to the average crops of wheat, (allowing for failures), throughout the whole colony of New South Wales. It has been stated to be as low as sixteen bushels per acre, throughout the whole territory for a long period of years, but in this estimate the greater portion of the crops were rudely grown at cattle and sheep stations, for the mere supply of the shepherds and stockmen, and not the slightest attention was paid to the growing wheat, from the time that it was unskilfully sown on indifferent ground, rather scratched than ploughed, until it was reaped. In those districts, where the cultivation of the ground, and the production of grain for the Sydney market, form the principal occupation of the settler, I should consider the average crop of wheat one year with another, and allowing for losses, to be, at least, at the rate of twenty-one bushels to the acre; and indeed my own experience in colonial agriculture would induce me to suppose it higher even than this. I have heard of fifty bushels per acre of wheat being harvested on cleared forest land, and Mr. Wentworth says, that he has known one hundred bushels of