Criticism of the Mildura scheme.The management of those departments which were in the hands of Messrs. Chaffey is almost as unfavourably criticised in the report of the Royal Commission as the financial management. 'Foremost among the causes of failure,' it says, 'must be placed the grave errors made in laying out the settlement and in making provision for the supply of water for irrigation purposes.' It is quite certain that the undue spreading-out of the settlement, which now covers over 50 square miles, was one of the principal causes of failure. At Renmark the land was settled block by block owing to the wise control exercised by the Government; the South Australian agreement with the Messrs. Chaffey containing the important provision—which is not to be found in the Victorian indenture—that no grant should issue until water has been laid to some point suitable for the irrigation of each 500 acres proposed to be conveyed. At Mildura the Colony was kept fairly compact at first—that is, as long as settlement went on gradually. But in 1890 and 1891, in response to the extensive system of advertising adopted, a tremendous rush of settlers took place, eager to take up land at the apparently high price of 20l. an acre which the Chaffeys were asking for it. For many months, sales went on at the rate of 10,000l. a month. It is not in the least to be wondered at that when sales were going on at this rate the Messrs. Chaffey should have allowed settlers to take up land more or less where they pleased in Blocks A and B, and should even have sold land in Block C, eight or nine miles from the river. They naturally thought, as most of us would have done, that if settlement proceeded at the same rate the intervening blocks would soon be taken up. They also were, no doubt, influenced
