Establishing themselves on the new land: Port Phillip crop-growers in the 1840s

Historians of early New South Wales (NSW) commonly agree that crop-farming was an unattractive occupation in the pre-gold rush period. Agricultural settlers were affected by the high cost of arable soils, a small colonial market, low crop prices, high labour costs, lack of capital, weather uncertainties and trifling support from the colonial government. Against these odds it is no wonder that Chris King concluded that before the mid-nineteenth century growing cash-crops was 'considered by many a hazardous investment, usually a means of severing fools from their money'. Nevertheless, there were a number of people engaged on the land in the second quarter of the nineteenth century who did consider cultivation a viable commercial activity. In spite of the unfavourable environmental and economic conditions, there were by the mid-nineteenth century around 15,000 NSW residents (including the Port Phillip district) making a permanent living from cropping land.