'It was the first extensive wheat crop of South Australia; the first
harvest-home of the bunch of people, who had there been shaken on to the
sea-beach. When the wheat had ripened, everybody--including, I am glad to
say, the Governor--turned to the harvesting of it. Riots had threatened
earlier, the result of the state of affairs in the Colony, and the
measures which I deemed it necessary to introduce. As a precaution, I had
some soldiers, about a hundred and fifty, I think, sent to me from New
South Wales. That was a step on which I was entitled to congratulate
myself. At the pruning hook, in getting in that harvest, they were of
vast assistance, and not often have soldiers been more nobly occupied.'
Yet the pruning hook, which Sir George associated with the historic
harvest, and with Ridley, an early Australian colonist, was hardly of the
Scriptural pattern. It was a subtle machine, invented for a harvest where
the wheat-ears were needed, not the straw. The former were chopped off,
collected in a sort of trough; and the straw was burned for manure. Here
was waste, only there was no avoiding it, and, moreover, the meaning of
'waste' is defined by circumstances. The South Australian soil was so
fruitful that it only needed to be thrown seed. Sir George satisfied
himself that it contained gypsum, such as belongs to the fertile parts of
Egypt.
Pages:
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82