SQUATTING IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1488, 26 December 1884, Page 2

SQUATTING IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

i A squatter on the Darling River, Now South Wales, writes thus to a friend in Dunedin : — " squatting h, s been far from a paying on tli s . river for tiiw last few years. Wh: t ; with bad seasons, high rents, unsatis- | factory state of the land laws, and last : but not least the rabbits, some ' squatters luve been almost tempted ;o , give up their leases. To show you t) >c | dreadful effects of the drought of 1883 I I may state that a station a few miles ■ away from here clipped 158,00"0 sheep j last year, and I have just now heard ; i hat they have this year clipped 48,20i>. I The country will never by so good as J it was, no matter under what condij tions it is held nor bow good the seasons are. In 1376 we started 50,:00 fat wtln'irs from this station in twelve , months to Adelaide, a:ul they averaged | 13s 2-1 ill round. Our losses last \va. were principally confined to horses, and were it not that we fed them with flour, not a hoof would be alive — the flour costs here L 35 per ton. As re gards the outlook this coming summe.i; it is prophesied that it will go still harder with the station o vuers, and although new comers think thiugs generally look promising enough, we who are behind the scenes know better. As an old hand up here, I venture to say that unless rain falls before the middle of December there will not be 107,000 sheep alive at the end of January, 1815, in the whole of the Gilbert district." Pastoral tenants in this country have much to complain of, 'but it would appear from the foregoing that there are worse places than New Zealand for bad seasons.