ABSTRACT
THE opening chapter, had transformed the Australian Colonies. The population of New South Wales had doubled. Thanks to the improvement of the breed of sheep in the twenties and to the discovery of tract after tract of new pastoral country, the ‘squatters’ had spread far beyond the old ‘nineteen counties’ southward to the Murrumbidgee and the Murray and Port Phillip, and northward to New England and the Darling Downs and Moreton Bay. There had been an unprecedented amount of free immigration, and for the first time the convict element had been completely swamped by the free. The more adventurous spirits of Van Diemen's Land had betaken themselves across Bass Strait to join at Port Phillip the pioneers from the north. Wakefield had launched the new colony of South Australia.
