SINCE THE late nineteenth century, education in Australia has been under state control by means of centralized Departments of Education financed by government funds and operating under the jurisdiction of a parliamentary Cabinet Minister. From the outset, these Departments were faced with the task of bringing education to children in the outback regions. The inadequate and irregular rainfall of the vast Australian inland in most of the states discouraged the far-flung growth of primary industry except, generally speaking, in the case of sheep raising on extensive land holdings requiring very little manpower to work them. In some of the hotter interior regions of the north, where rainfall was more plentiful, lightly manned but large cattle stations came into being. This type of development resulted in a thinly-scattered pattern of inland settlement where provisions for schooling were slow to penetrate until the state assumed full responsibility for education. Beginnings A study of educational developments early in the present century makes evident the desire of the centralized State Departments of Education to equalize educational opportunities for children at the primary level whether they lived in the outback or in the towns. In fact, in their efforts to meet the problem of educating young people in the sparselypopulated country areas, the Departments devised solutions which in some instances were unique at the time and have since won wide acclaim overseas. In New South Wales, even prior to state control of education in 188o, various government measures were devised to teach some of the children in isolated and sparsely settled regions. By 1881, 246 provisional schools had been set up in temporary accommodation in certain outback areas where between 12 and 19 children of school age could be gathered together. During the latter part of the nineteenth century also, itinerant teachers were appointed to travel from home to home, while others provided part-time instruction by teaching alternately in each of two small 'half-time' schools situated some distance apart. (1) These measures were gradually replaced by the establishment, in 1904, of central schools to which children from surrounding areas were conveyed free of charge. (2) The use of provisional schools and itinerant teachers was also adopted by Queensland. (3) In 1903, the New South Wales Department of Education founded subsidized schools to cater for isolated small settlements which contained fewer than nine or ten children of school age. These isolated families were required to combine to hire and accommodate a tutor and provide a school room in return for a government grant of ?5 per pupil per annum as a payment towards the teacher's salary. By 190o7, New South Wales had 281 of these schools in operation. (4) Such schools were also introduced on a similar basis in