[Gutenberg 25527] • Australia, The Dairy Country

The practice of dairying, in a limited domestic sense, as applied to the milking of a few cows and the making of a little butter and cheese for family use, is as old as the history of mankind, and in that restricted meaning dairying has been carried on in Australia since the arrival of the first settlers. But the industry as existing there to-day is a vastly different matter, being already of great importance, and promising rapid and extensive development. It is a young industry, so recently out of its infancy that if this report had been written fifteen years ago the section on dairying might have been almost as brief as the famous chapter on snakes in Ireland.