right across the fertile valley to "Rest Down," the earliest settlement in the island, so called because the first people "rested down" here in old Governor Collins's time. Then the broad sweep of the river intervenes, and fifty miles off, the great dividing range of the Table Mountain closes in the scene. The remains of the first chimney built on Tasmanian soil was visible at Rest Down up to twenty years ago.
This particular orchard comprises forty-five acres. Last year the owner sold 2000 bushels of gooseberries, 3000 bushels of currants, and other fruits, including apples. In two years he raised fifty tons of strawberries on the estate. For the last twelve years the average return per acre has been over 60l. I saw two and a half acres of gooseberry bushes, from which 500 bushels of fruit are picked every year, and which are sold at 4s. 6d. per bushel. This beats wheat hollow. On the other side of the estate I was shown over ten acres of fine black soil, beautifully worked, and kept as clean as a Behar indigo field. During the ninth year of its cultivation this small patch yielded 1000 bushels gooseberries and 2000 bushels apples, for which the ruling prices are 4s. 6d. to 5s. per bushel. And yet if one talks to the ordinary run of Australian farmers about new products, about fruit-growing, tomatoes, vines, oil crops, anything out of the eternal old grind of wheat, and other usual cereals, he is laughed at, sneered at, jeered at, and stigmatized as visionary, conceited, and goodness only knows what else.
