The 3500 Farms Scheme was a land development scheme to settle areas in the eastern Wheatbelt region of Western Australia south of

Southern Cross CRUX is a lightweight x86-64 Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users and delivered by a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts. It is not based on any other Linux distribution. It also utilizes a ports system to ...

in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Planning

The idea was first proposed in 1925, with planning originating in 1928 to settle an area of about , east of Mollerin and south of Southern Cross and east of the Great Southern Railway on a total of 3,500 separate farms. A conference was held in

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

to discuss the plan in detail, including the Premier

Philip Collier Philip Collier (21 April 1873 – 18 October 1948) was an Australian politician who served as the 14th Premier of Western Australia from 1924 to 1930 and from 1933 to 1936. He was leader of the Labor Party from 1917 to 1936, and is Western Aus ...

, the Minister of Lands, and Edward Mulvany of the Development and Migration Commission. Collier completed his proposal for the Federal Government in July 1929. The scheme was a result of a tri-party arrangement between the State, Federal and Imperial Governments, with approval from the Development and Migration Commission. It was envisaged that the scheme would produce some 12 million

bushel A bushel (abbreviation: bsh. or bu.) is an Imperial unit, imperial and United States customary units, US customary unit of volume, based upon an earlier measure of dry capacity. The old bushel was used mostly for agriculture, agricultural pr ...

s of wheat annually and graze an extra million sheep. It was estimated an additional of railways and of roads would be required. The total cost of the project was estimated at over £4 million; it would employ some 2,000 men. A 1929 survey indicated that farmers having sufficient water would be an issue. It also found that the area from

Norseman The Norsemen (or Northmen) were a cultural group in the Early Middle Ages, originating among speakers of Old Norse in Scandinavia. During the late eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a large-scale expansion in all directions, giving ris ...

to Newdegate had an elevation of above sea level with a scattering of higher peaks and knolls. The land sloped south of the

Goldfields Railway The Goldfields Railway is a heritage railway that operates between Waihi and Waikino in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand's North Island. It operates over a section of track that was part of the East Coast Main Trunk Railway until the Kaim ...

towards the south coast and was drained by saline depressions and rivers to the coast. The main depressions in the area were in the form of

salt lakes A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per liter). I ...

or "lake country". Around 90% of the area is underlain by

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

and soil formed from these rocks. There are numerous granite outcrops, some as large as several hundred acres. There was little jointing in the granite, meaning that boring for sub-surface water would be near impossible.

Salinity

Hartley Teakle Laurence John Hartley Teakle (2 August 1901 – 8 December 1979) was Professor of Agriculture from 1947 until 1963 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He was born in Hawker, South Australia, grew up near Geraldton, Wes ...

produced a paper on alkali soils in 1928 and 1929. The report was released in early 1930 by Collier, causing much consternation in the state parliament. Professor James Arthur Prescott of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (later to become the

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications. CSIRO works with leading organisations arou ...

) confirmed Teakle's views on the inappropriateness of developing 3500 farms in his report released early in 1931.

Abandonment

The scheme was abandoned in 1930 by

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

due to natural

soil salinity Soil salinity is the salt (chemistry), salt content in the soil; the process of increasing the salt content is known as salinization (also called salination in American and British English spelling differences, American English). Salts occur nat ...

and a cause of further dryland salinity. The decision to abandon the scheme was also due to the commencement of the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

rather than just the predicted salt problems. The decision to abandon the scheme was strongly criticised when it was made, mostly by existing settlers in the adjoining Lakes District.

References

{{Reflist Wheatbelt (Western Australia)