AUSTRALIA'S NORTH

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 142, 12 December 1935, Page 29

AUSTRALIA'S NORTH

TRANSPORT PROBLEM

CATTLE WITHOUT A.MARKET

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, December 5. One of Australia's greatest problems is tho development of the Northern Territory, and. the crux of that problem is transport. The settlers there have proved the productivity of the territory, especially as a cattle area, but lack of facilities, including roads and railways, have nullified nearly all efforts to make settlement profitable. Personal statements all bring evidence to this eilect. Years of hard work and resolute self-denial as the wife of a cattle farmer in the territory, for instance, have convinced Mrs. H. G. Sargent, who has "come south" to undergo an operation, that the Commonwealth Government is "not doing its duty by the north."

Mrs. Sargent comes from Stapleton, about seventy miles east of Darwin, where she lives with her husband and family of eleven. "My husband is an Englishman who went to Canada, as a boy of 13," she said. "Twenty-two years ago, we went to Queensland, and found, that Australia was a better cattle country than Canada.' In Australia you don't have to 'put up' feed for the stock in winter. From Canada jwe brought everything we had. We invested it first in Brisbane and then we put the whole lot into our cattle (venture in the Northern Territory.

"From Stapleton we hold runs stretching right through to the western and northern coasts. The country is like no other in Australia. Some is very poor—just ironstone and sandstone—and other parts are extremely rich and self-irrigated. We have been very lucky with water. Springs run all the year round and there are many permanent water courses. Our holdings make up the largest fenced area in the north, and the thousands of cattle scattered over them mean that the family of thirteen has to be mustering continually. We have four sons and seven daughters, the youngest of whom is aged five.

"In spite of all these advantages we have sold only twenty head of cattle in the last five and a half years. We had to. drove them one hundred miles north to the Fletcher's Gully gold mine. For us, as for the Northern Territory settlers, the great difficulty is the lack of market facilities for our fat stock. If the Government would give us a ship, the whole north would benefit. We have the country, we have the holdings, and we have the labour. All we want is a ship. It is a matter of life and death.

"The best outlet for beef would be Japan, but failing that, it could be brought round to the east coast of Australia. When I was in Brisbane on the way down, beef was selling at lOd a pound, and they could not get the fat cattle they wanted. In the Northern Territory, there is an abundance of fat cattle, but no way of reaching a market."

At Stapleton, Mrs. Sargent adds to her many duties the work of schoolteacher. Her children go to school for half of each day from January to March, and are free in the busy times to help on the farm. All of them, from five-year-old Lorna to a" grown-up daughter, have learned reading, writing, arithmetic, and other subjects from?their mother. For the last five years, the family has lived on the proceeds of dairying and butter-making. '