Flood-Plain Farming on the Maitland Flats, Hunter Valley, N.S.W.

Abstract

T oHE agricultural landscape of Australia is generally fashioned on an extensive scale, for over wide areas physical factors-particularly climate-preclude the intensive use of the land as practiced by her Asian neighbors to the north. However, pockets of intensive cultivation do exist, particularly in those sections of the better-watered eastern coast where streams have built up stretches of fertile alluvial soil. Such valley plains are rarely more than a few square miles in extent, but they help significantly to sustain the large urban populations of the coastal regions. One of the most important alluvial lowlands is found in the Hunter River Valley (Fig. 1), a basin of nearly 9000 square miles with the city of Newcastle at the river mouth. The valley is noted for its production of coal and steel, but also has a complex rural economy based on dairying, crop farming, beef cattle raising, sheep grazing, and timber production. Generally, the Hunter River flows through undulating terrain composed of Permian conglomnerates, sandstones, and shales; but in favored areas round Scone, Muswellbrook, Singleton, and significant plain pockets occur. It is with the crop-dairy combination of part of the that the present survey is concerned. Concentrated in a small area of flood plain in the lower part of the valley is a group of farms which provides an interesting study of the interplay of physical and economic forces in the evolution of a land use pattern. Unlike the dairy farms, which generally range in size from 80 to 200 acres, the crop properties are small by Australian standards, commonly between 20 and 40 acres, but not unlike those found in other high-producing areas scattered throughout the continent. The particular interest of these farms lies in a number of features: the twin dangers of flood and moisture stress; short-term stability combined with longterm changes in crop combinations; the influence of a stringent milk zoning system on1 dairying techniques; and, Onl the purely cash-crop farms, the distinctive arrangement of fenceless fields. The core of the area described here occupies only about 6700 acres (Fig. 2), mainly less than 25 feet above sea level. It is located a few miles upstream from the river mouth near the city of Maitland, from which the term Maitland Flats derives its name. The core area comprises the Bolwarra and Phoenix Park sectors of the Flats, lying between the bend in the Hunter River at Lorn and the lower reaches of the Paterson River, which joins the Hunter below the town and erstwhile port of