ABSTRACT

In 1912, late on a winter’s afternoon, the editor of Bourke’s Western Herald newspaper led a party on a tour of the experiment farm and settlement at Pera Bore. After setting out from Bourke, travelling 12 miles into a strong westerly wind that carried tonnes of red dust, past barren plains and the dried scraps of dead saltbush, the visitors arrived at Pera Bore to behold a ‘glorious sight’. Cut out of the gidgee scrub were neat rectangular blocks of 20 acres each. On these grew millet, maize, dates and citrus fruits, all watered with over a mile of irrigation channels. They saw orange groves with ‘beautiful green’ foliage and ‘luscious’ fruit. ‘Fancy,’ said the visitors, ‘millions of golden globules hanging from the trees.’ This, they declared, truly was ‘an oasis in the desert’.1 Less than a decade later the settlement was abandoned. This was a place where science for agriculture met its limits.