REPURCHASED ESTATES.

The Harvey Estate.—The State has purchased, without the consent of the Land Board, the Harvey Estate at Harvey, some 8,002 acres, for £24,613. Accumulated charges have swollen the total to £35,454. Only 428 acres have been sold and the balance is retained for sale to returned soldiers. The deal has not been a good one for the State, though, with the assistance of the Harvey Irrigation Scheme, it may some day justify itself.

The Stirling Estate of 9,900 acres, the purchase of which was approved by the Land Purchase Board, cost £10,000, to which must be added £7,110 spent in drainage and expenses. The Government reserved 2,737 acres for Tuart and Lime and sold 7,099 acres for £18,333. The area unsold is 64 acres and the arrears of purchase money and interest are only £286. It will be noted that the State made a cash profit of £1,223 on the deal and holds in reserve, as a further profit, more than a quarter of the area purchased. This successful result is probably unique in the history of repurchased estates.

The Denmark Estate was not acquired under the legislation governing repurchased estates, and is a State excursion into the field of land speculation. The area is 26,731 acres; the price paid was £26,800. The accumulated debit to date is given us as £75,318, of which sum £29,000 is represented by clearing, of which we are told not five per cent. was effective work. Nominally, 347 selections, totalling 19,234 acres, have been sold for £20,529, but of the 347 selections, 101 are actually abandoned. Of the balance of 246, ostensibly occupied at the moment, it is questionable if 100 settlers are to be found actually on the land. Enlistments from this district have been very heavy.

The estate was purchased with the idea that immigrants, or Australians of the old pioneering stock, would come forward to establish homes on land of great productivity in a fine climate. We have inspected the estate and we say that, though patchy, it contains a fair area of rich land capable of growing anything in reason. Situated on the Denmark River, and racing Wilson's Inlet, it is provided with railway communication, and, relatively, with fair roads. Apart from it remote situation—385 miles from Perth—it offers every inducement to settlement in those features which make for enduring satisfaction—a climate of unrivalled salubrity with picturesque and attractive surroundings. The timber is heavy—colossal indeed—but the hardy settlers who have endured have now learned how to subdue the forests on practical lines, and the country is capable of successful occupation. We saw there beautiful lucerne, growing without irrigation, maize, swedes, mangolds, fruit and garden truck in profusion; clovers and permanent English grasses flourishing, and, in short, all the indications of real dairying country of great promise.

Candidly, we do not blame the Government for the apparent failure of the settlement. It is the temper of Australia that is wrong. All is not lost at Denmark, and when Australians are prepared to go back to pioneering and to contented industry and frugality, this luckless settlement offers them, on those conditions, nearly all that life can give.

Dealing with the repurchased estates question in the South-West as a whole, we draw attention to our previous recommendations for amended legislation to sell such land on 60 years' terms, or perpetual lease, at settler's option. The aim of the State should not be revenue, but settlement on lines which will enable men to occupy land without contributing more than nominal payments to the State till the land is reproductive.

THE STATE FARMS.

The Brunswick State Farm contains about 800 acres and has cost the State to-day, in original cost and accumulated losses and interest, something like £40,000. The Agricultural Department's figures show the total as £37,020, inclusive of compassionate simple interest charges. We found it operating under a very capable manager who could probably, if left to himself, run the place on commercial lines. But under political management there was little that was satisfactory. The place, if it is run at all by the State, should be devoted to dairying, but nearly all the cows, for some unknown reason, have been sold, and the manager was left with some 20 cows, a few young stock, and some pigs, to occupy his empty acres in heartbreaking impotence. For months a boar had been required to mate with the sows; for months he had vainly requisitioned the animal. Tied hand and foot by the departmental machine, he was powerless to do anything.

Out of the waste at Brunswick, two good things survive: one is the admirable irrigation installation laid down by the Irrigation Department; the other is the pure-bred herd of Ayrshire cattle.

Under an efficient and non-political Board of Agriculture, the farm could, with advantage, be installed as a straight out Dairy Farm, running and enlarging the pure-bred Ayrshire Herd to the full capacity of the property, to be maintained for ever as a Standard Herd, breeding and distributing its young stock as time goes on. One pure bred herd of swine could also be run on the same lines. Under the present system of management, the State should cut its loss and sell the place.

Denmark State Farm: The area is 50 acres, divided by the Denmark River, which renders the two portions more or less inaccessible to the other, and, consequently, unduly expensive to work together. Forty acres have been cleared. The land has never—under the curious method of State book-keeping—been debited to the farm, but the cost of development and accrued interest and losses to date are £6,331. The farm has been equipped with a toy butter factory which, by the exercise of considerable ingenuity, might be more cramped and difficult to run. It also boasts a bacon-curing factory suitable for a working farm, but more or less useless for the purpose to which it is now put, namely, the treatment of the surrounding settler's pigs. The farm is in charge of an English farmer of the best type, whose admirable methods and results were a pleasure to witness. It carried at the time of our visit, on 40 acres of cleared land, 28 cattle, three horses, and some 200 pigs. Most of the pigs had been dumped from other State farms, and being transparently beyond the carrying capacity of the place, were being worked off gradually on bought feed.