CINDERELLA STATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 89, 16 April 1927, Page 16

CINDERELLA STATE.

W.A. COMES OUT OF HER SHELL. GREAT WHEAT COUNTRY. RIVALLING SOUTH AUSTRALIA'S OUTPUT. When he was last in Auckland— thirty-two years ago —Mr. A. E. Green, Federal M.H.R. for Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, was travelling as a trimmer on the old Arawa. To-day he again passed through, but this time he was a passenger on the Niagara, the direct lineal descendant of his former ship. Accompanied by Mrs. Green, ho is making a tour of the world, or as much of it as he can see in the time at his disposal. A "good Australian" he will talk about the continent across the Tasman until further orders, and thinks it hard to beat, but that does not blind him to the fact that a politician should have a wide outlook and he is out to pick up ideas that will help him in his parliamentary duties in the Federal Parliament House, where he sits as one of the Labour members. Although a Labour member he is al~o a farmer, and his ideas are not of the '"three acres and a cow" order. Western Australia is rapidly emerging as a great wheatgrowing country, and the old gold-dig-

ging days are rapidly falling into the background.

The huge harvest last year totalled 30,000.000 bushels, and as Mr. Green told a "Star" reporter this afternoon, Western Australia is "now knocking at the door of South Australia, the premier wheat-growing State of the Commonwealth. One great advantage that Western Australia possesses is that the land is cheap—ridiculously so to New Zealand ideas. Land that one can get in Western Australia for £3 an acre, is equal to the stuff that one would have to pay £10 an acre for, say, in Victoria. Western Australia wheat growers don't depend on the humble plough horse. There they do things on a big 6cale. Tractors are the motive power, and in the twelve hours they seed and drill fort v acres.

People who have got into the habit of thinking G f Western Australia as part goldneld and part droughty country, with a bit of timber land thrown in, don't realise that anywhere where there is a rainfall up to'about eight inches wheat is nut only possible, but highly profitable. By understanding the soil and using superphosphate the Western Australian farmer has been able to use vast areas of land that would strike a New Zealander as little short of desert. Owing to the cheapness of land in the •State, the moneyed people from the neighbouring States, notably South Australia, are investing hupe -urns of nionbv and the progress of the Cinderella" of the Commonwealth has been little short of phenominal.