in all the produce of the Hunter River district is carried on between Morpeth, Newcastle, and Sydney, from which they are distant about eighty miles, the cheapness of steam communication having led to the abandonment of the road formed at immense cost by convict labour over the monutainous barren country inland between Sydney and the Hunter River.
Hunter River is subject to droughts, but otherwise one of the oldest and finest agricultural districts. Yine cultivation is carried on there successfully, on a large scale. Its tributaries, the Williams and Paterson Rivers, are both navigable for a greater distance than the Hunter, the Williams uniting at twenty miles and the Paterson at thirty-five miles from Newcastle. They give access to districts which are cooler and better supplied with rain than the Hunter.
Maitland owes its double name to the government having laid out East Maitland during the land-buying mania, three miles up the river, at a point too shallow for steam-boats to approach; on which speculators laid out West Maitland.
The country round is flat, sometimes flooded, and produces fine crops of wheat and Indian corn. Along the Paterson the country is undulating and fertile, surrounded by hills which attract rain, and render it better adapted for cattle than sheep. Tobacco cultivation has been successfully pursued : thriving farms occupy the banks of the rivers, which fetch a good price, either to sell or rent. Kangaroos, plentiful a few years ago, are becoming scarce; but wild ducks may be shot on the river, and good fish caught.
In April the winter sets in and continues until September, with nights cold enough to make a fire pleasant, and sharp frost at daybreak.
In October the summer commences, and the wheat harvest in November. Then in the Hunter district the hot winds commence, blow for three days, and not unfrequently blight wheat just coming into ear: these hot winds are usually succeeded by a sharp southerly gale, accompanied by rain, which soon makes everything not actually blighted look green again. This more particularly refers to the Paterson. At Segenhoe, one of the most beautiful estates in New South Wales, which extends in romantic park-like scenery for six miles along the River Hunter, in the county of Brisbane, three years have sometimes elapsed before the fall of rain.
The Hunter River may be considered a favourable specimen of an accessible and long-settled district. The river is now not only the means of communication by the sea for the produce of its immediate territory, but also for all the wool and all the supplies interchanged
