River Lachlan without Law and Religion

The Sydney Morning Herald

23 March 1850

River Lachlan March 18.

Will you credit that this extensive district, from the Lachlan to the Burrowa River, is without magistrate, police, or clergy?

Indeed, as I am informed, a clergyman of any denomination has never been known to visit this district.

Hence concubinage, drunkenness, robbery, indeed vice of every description, is paramount, if not universal.

The Government are now about to dispose of limited portions of land (from twenty to fifty acres), which will enable these characters to obtain a freehold, and consequently a permanent footing in the district by their ill acquired means.

What effect this will have in this peculiar community is not very evident.

The measure is certainly very distasteful to our large stockholders; but it may fairly be argued that an interest in the soil will not alone fix the individual to a locality, and thereby check vagrancy, and moreover render him more accessible to the police; but it may foster habits of industry, and also be the nucleus of a future yeomanry.