Farming – an 1878 comparison between Gympie and Maryborough districts

The article below was published in The Brisbane Courier of the 6th of April 1878 and gives an insight into the early days of farming in Maryborough and Gympie Districts and how and why they were developed in very different ways.  It causes me to ponder about how many of our ancestors who immigrated from farming areas in other parts of the world, and had disembarked in Maryborough, chose to move to Gympie because of this difference and being able to provide for their families in a way which was familiar to them rather than purely ‘chasing gold’.

OUR Wide Bay correspondent contributes the following notes on the agricultural interest in the Maryborough and Gympie districts

The Gympie Times is publishing a series of papers on farming, as it is, in the Gympie district The special reporter for that journal does his work thoroughly and well ; giving a faithful and detailed description of farming in the central and southern portions of Wide Bay. He contents himself with facts and figures, and a Flemish minuteness of detail, leaving the task of generali-sation to his readers. No one who reads the report, and is at the same time acquainted with the system of farming round about Maryborough, can fail to be struck by the contrast it presents to that of farming in the neighborhood of Gympie; but this is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that the scheme of agricultural settlement was radically different in the two places.  At Gympie farming was the accident of Settlement; while at Maryborough, so far as it extends beyond the exigencies of a wool or hide, bone, and horn depot, settlement is the accident of farming. In the former instance it was the result of a natural effort to supply an existing demand in the latter, an exotic attempt to create one. In the one case farming, as was to be expected, was successful in the other, as surely a failure. The conclusion is paradoxical, doubtless, but a little reflection will convince most of my readers that the position is tonable. Until it is attacked it is unnecessary to enter upon any elaborate defence, and the following facts will serve to illustrate, if they do not prove my case.

About Gympie there is scarcely a holding from the 30 or 40 acre farm to the selection whose acreage is reckoned by thousands, on which stock-raising, grazing, and cultivation do not supplement each other. Good substantial barns, stables, and other farm buildings are the rule almost without exception. Selections are everywhere divided and subdivided into paddocks for grazing, breeding, and agricultural purposes. Dairying is conducted on those scientific and economical principles which ensure the maximum of milk, butter, and cheese, with the minimum of injury to cows and calves. Winter fodder is a prominent and striking feature in the fields and in the rick yards; root crops are cultivated to no inconsiderable extent. Labor-saving machinery is employed on the great majority of the selections. Gardening is not neglected in either of its branches, fruits, vegetables, flowers; vine-yards and orangeries are numerous, flourishing, and promise to be profitable; purebred bulls and high-class draft and blood horses are already exercising an influence on the character of the local herds and studs.

In the neighborhood of Maryborough, on the other hand, there is a gradual encroachment of the plantations on the farms, while the latter at best, as a rule, produce nothing but maize, pumpkins, and a few patches of potatoes; they graze and breed no kind of stock, and seldom indeed suffice for the supply of fruits or vegetables to the homestead. The selections proper are comparatively seldom occupied or improved; they afford ample evidence of not having been taken up in earnest, but with the intention of spending as little time and money on them as the conditions of tenure permit, and of waiting until the lapse of years should render them valuable and saleable, rather than with any idea of turning them to immediate account, or with the faintest notion of getting a living out of them. You will perhaps see as much land fenced in at the Maryborough end of the district as about Gympie, but with the exception of a few Danish and German homesteads there is no evidence whatever that settlement, such as was contemplated by the Land Acts of ’68, 72, and ’70, has been promoted in the neighborhood of Maryborough by cheapening the land, and the great bulk of it taken upon conditional purchase will be found to belong to non-residents, who have selected with a hazy notion that “land will be valuable to their children some day.”

 This story was compiled by Kathy Punter.

Sources:  Trove;