1921 Annual Report - the RNA

Il--laaLI , a~k~3~e~suP~lb~bsrssl~aaasAr~Ali~s~~ /_~ _"They all believed that in the fulness of time, Queenslandwould become the centre of Australia's prosperity and greatness,and they wanted the Governor-General and Lady Forster to believethat, too. (Applause). The Royal National Association was doingwhat it could to hasten that time, and it deserved every supportin its work. He had no doubt that the Association still wouldhave a continuance of the assistance of the City Council in themaintenance and development of what, after all, was the city'schief annual attraction to visitors from the country and from otherStates.Queensland being the premier (attle State, it was natural thatit should have the finest Australian specimens of Shorthorns andHerefords. But the State's growing industry, from which mustcome that closer settlement so necessary for her, was dairying,and it was well to see so goodly an array of Milking Shorthorns,Jerseys, Frisians, and Ayrshires.Wool growing was represented more by samples of fleeces thanby the sheep themselves, although there were sonie fine fat wethers.The dairy herds lid their complement in Pigs fedil on dairy byproducts.There well might be more Pigs. Good as were theexhibits of Stock and Poultry, what would strike the visitor most,probably was the Produce Sections. The mere enumeration of theprincipal items there, cheese, butter, condensed milk, honey, maize,wheat, sugar cane, cotton, citrus and more tropical fruits, allillustrated the Stat,'s vast productiveness, while the exhibit of theState ('annery, of the Soul llher Queensland Fruit-Growers' Society,and, rather surprisingly, of the Charleville District, gave specialprominence to the fruit industry.West Muretoii, Wide Bay, and Burlnett, Darling Downs,Kingaroy, and Wallumbilla each had exhibits which surpassed bytheir variety and1 pleased by their excellence. They showed thatthere was sonme gool fannring in the State, but he felt bound toadd, after going rather cursorily through the Exhibition, and alsothrough the State, that he wished the general average of stockand agriculture more nearly approached the high standards whichthe Royal National Association achieved at its Show. Queenslanders,although they rightly spoke with pride of their country,wrongly neirlected to make the most of it. There was waste ofland and water, of grass andl fruit, of wood and labour. He wasconstantly told by men who knew that there was too much goodland available for any stimulus to close settlement-that was forthe farming of small areas by good methods of agriculture, takingcare always to put back into the land what was taken out of it.There was too much growing of the same crop, year after year,in the belief that the soil's nutritive powers were inexhaustible,or in the knowledge that virgin soil was available to take theplace of the worked out land. In a country where there waspractically no irrigation, the waste of water was too patent toneed remark. The waste of grass was twofold, for it entailed lossof stock in times of drought, and also it was wasted on poorquality stock, which consumed as much as those returning a muchbetter yield. He was assured by cattlemen that cross-breedingtendered to inferiority of stock after the first progeny, and heknew that 193 gallons of milk per cow per annum was a pooraverage for the milking herds of the State. (Hear, hear). "Gradeap the herd and conserve forage," should be the aim of everycattleman, and particularly of the dairyman. Those were theSsy,i*