Transcription

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GWYDER DISTRICT

DROOPING DRY AND PARTCHED SEASONS ON HUNTER RIVER
 

The lower part of Hunter River was early occupied from the settlement at Newcastle. Mr Benjamin Singleton crossed the Bulga range of moumtains from the Settlements on Hawkesbury river and discovered Patricks Plains on the 17th March 1820. Glendon on Hunter River five miles from these plains was occupied same year, at that time, and for many years after the river was navigable for small boats higher than where the Township of Singleton is now Situated, no roads were formed for some time, & the Supplies for Glendon were forwarded from Newcastle in a whale boat.

The Seasons on Hunter River interocening the years 1820 & 1840 were favourable for grazing & the agriculturalist, & with the exception of the year 1836 excellent crops were produced.

These seasons may be termed drooping seasons, during the whole of these years with the exception of 1836 the Hunter river was running a considerable stream. The seasons interocening the years 1840 and 1847 were reversed and the crops were every year failing. Some seasons producing half a crop, some only a quarter of a crop, and others no crop.

The River Hunter continued to decrease, and ceased during some years to run. These dry and parched Seasons, extended into the interior of the country as far as the table land of New England, or to the Range Country, which has been partially occupied since 1832, and the interveening fourteen seasons on that Table land have been favourable for the grazier and agriculturalist.

"The time girdles of the earth between the Tropics and 400 were often subject to droughts, as all old histories prose. The history of Palestine, Lyria. and Arabia, as to Seasons, is the History of New South Wales, La Plata, and Chili. For a few years out of the twenty the equatorial and Polar rains meet, then we have flood. But the greater portion of the twenty they do not meet, and then we have only mountains & Coast Showers, and drought"

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