GOLDEN WESTRALIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 190, 13 August 1928, Page 8

GOLDEN WESTRALIA.

"ILLIMITABLE POSSIBILITIES"

AN OPTIMISTIC PICTURE. HON. A. McCALLOr BELIEVES EN* HIS STATE. The Hon. A. Mcv Hum. who is a passenger by the Niagara, fires the imagination when one talks to him as to the almost illimitable possibilities of his home State. West Australia, where he is the Minister of Works in the Collier , Government. Mr. McCallum left Australia more than six months ago. because his doctors considered that his physical condition necessitated a rest and a change of scene. That lie has benefited his enthusiasm about the future of Westralia demonstrates. "In 190.) the great Western State was not even self-supporting in the matter of foodstuffs: it imported wheat, flour and dairy produce from the East. The grain shortage was overcome some years ago. and the output of dairy produce has now overtaken the needs of a rapidly expanding population. And this u- only the dawn of the great future that promises riches for the territory. This year the exportable surplus of wheat was 30.000.000 bushels. With a good harvest next year 50.000.000 is a possibility; there will be 300,000 acres more under crop. The time is not far distant when the balance of the great Commonwealth grain surplus will be with the Western State. New South Wales will l>e left well behind. To-day abundance of feed is going to waste because of the lack of flocks of sheep to consume it; but the sheep census shows rapid expansion: and every acre of land that goes under wheat demands more sheep if the land is to be used to the best advantage. This, briefly, is Mr. McC'allum's story, and how lias it been brought about? It is a development of the past twenty years, resulting from the combination of three things. One an abundance of suitable land: two. settlers to work that land: and three, an Agricultural Bank that has made it possible for those settlers. often without capital, to develop the land and extract a portion at least of its latent riches. No one of the three factors has possibly been more important than another, but a liberal system of finance has unquestionably vastly accelerated the process. Families without means have been able to take up areas of 1000 acres, build homes, fell the forest and burn tlie lesser scrub, till and purchase seed and gather the crops. The money has been available at the rate at which the Government could borrow it, plus one i>er cent for overhead. Payment of interest only has been required during the first ten years, when reduction of principal, as well as the interest bill, has to be met. The Collier Government lias not continued the group settlement scheme which its predecessor inaugurated after the war. But on the whole this movement must be accounted a success, according to Mr. McCallum, for despite its individual failures it is the breaking in of the bush lands of the South-West that has removed the reproach that a rich agricultural State required to import from its neighbours £'2,000.000 of dairy produce annually. But the Collier Government are not resting in the matter of a land policy. Mr. McCallum talks of the early opening of eight millions of acres in the wheat belt. Very largely this will be settled hv immigrants under an Imperial scheme to which the Home. State and Commonwealth Governments will contribute. The average price of this land will be from 10/ to 12/ per acre, and the Agricultural Bank will finance the settlers. Mr. McCallum sees in the English coalminer. tens of thousands of whom are out of employment, men who. as a class, should make good settlers on these wheat lands. "For the man who works," he says, "there is independence in five years, and sufficient freedom of finance to permit of a visit to the Old Country in little more than that time." It is an attractive picture of a great development, and it looks as if the old exhortation: "Cio west, young man. go west." was still sound sense. Mr. McCallum. who is accompanied by Mrs. McCallum. goes on by the Niagara to th» New EI Dorado of the Golden Wheat.