Fencing

The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser

22 April 1858

The Murrumbidgee - The S.M. Herald's correspondent writes:-

"The whole of the land lying between the Murrumbidgee and the Murray was about to be enclosed; the boundaries between the different stations were to be securely fenced, at cost to the occupants of these stations of fully £100,000.

Two steam engines have already arrived on the property of the enterprising Cadell, for the purpose of sawing and boring the posts and rails. The whole of this pastoral area, upon which are settled some of the oldest and most enterprising of the colonists have fought their way in this district would have been enclosed.

Of course the great work referred to will be immediately stopped; the occupants of those runs would not be mad enough to spend four or five thousand pounds each on land, the tenure of which depends upon the will of the Cowper Party.

The settlers will now make no improvements; they will no longer take an interest in the social and material progress of the interior. Once this Electoral Bill is passed, once it becomes an Act, as far as we are concerned, we shall cease to take an interest in the politics of New South Wales. Already many of our best colonists here are leaving us; it is well for them that they did so a few weeks back, or their property would have been depreciated 30 or 40 per cent by the Cowper policy.

The past week saw one of our stations on the boundary (in New South Wales) sold for £28,000; the day after the sale, the fortunate (?) purchasers (Messrs Orr) were offered £4000 for their bargain, because the property was situated on the New South Wales side of the Murray. What, would it now fetch?

Public opinion in Victoria never concluded that a minister of the sister colony would, in these enlightened times, "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs".

Their far-seeing men thought that New South Wales would seize on the propitious moment, while the pastoral interests were wrecked by the insane policy of the Victoria Ministry; they thought that a Minister of ordinary capacity of foresight that could boast at least of being modiocrital, would have fostered that interest which lifted the colony in days gone by, and which promised so much in regard to its future prosperity.