A Pioneer in Australia
This narrative of the life of a pioneer in Western Queensland in the sixties of the last century, with its record of indomitable pluck and persistence, crowned at last by success, and lit all through by faith in a Higher Power and by goodwill to others, has a quite conspicuous charm of its own. Mrs. Bennett, the elder daughter of Robert Christison, who gave the name of Lammermoor to the great Australian estate or " run " which he discovered and turned from desert into a vast cattle station, has done her work straightforwardly and well. The earlier adventures will remind readers, if any such remain, of Henry Kingsley, and of what that Aus- tralian explorer and great if unequal writer recorded. There were dangers from the aborigines, not infrequently due_ to -disgraceful treatment at the hands of white settlers, and -strange perils from poison-bush and thirst. Christison was " fifteen years ahead " of any support from Government. At the end came not only the devastating pest of " ticks," but too much Government interference and taxation. The time that Mr. Walter Page looked for " when the country man will come into his own, and the town man will no longer be able to tax and . •. . bully the world " is a long way off. " Australia is more and more its five capital, cities." Still, at the end, what a record ! Despite the octopus of debt, "Lammermoor with a stud herd second to none, and a general herd of forty thousand head. But the big drought of ten years from 1898 makes sad reading at the close. Health failed the founder of Lammermoor in his last bitter struggle ; he just saved his estate for a profitable sale, but his life he could not save. How little the story of those terrible years of widespread destruction is known ! These pages give a good and moving account of a strenuous, life lived to fine - purpose.
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