ments on the
unsaleable flocks and herds. But the law exacted payment on live
cattle only, so the squatters in their dire distress resolved to kill
their stock and boil them, the hides and the resulting tallow being
of some value. The Hentys, in the Portland district, commenced
boiling their sheep in January, 1844, and on every station in New
South Wales the paddocks still called the "boiling down" were devoted
to the destruction of sheep and cattle and to the production of
tallow. It was found that one hundred average sheep would yield one
ton of tallow, and ten average bullocks also one ton, the price in
London ranging from 35 pounds to 42 pounds per ton. By this device
of boiling-down some of the pioneers were enabled to retain their
runs until the discovery of gold.

The squatters were assisted in their endeavours to diminish the
numbers of their live stock by their neighbours, both black and
white. It is absurd to blame the aborigines for killing sheep and
cattle. You might as well say it is immoral for a cat to catch mice.
Hunting was their living; the land and every animal thereon was
theirs; and after we had conferred on them, as usual, the names of
savages and cannibals, they were still human beings; they were our
neighbours, to be treated with mercy; and to seize their lands by
force and to kill them was robbery and murder. The State is a mere
abstraction, has neither body nor soul, and an abstraction cannot be
sent either to heaven or hell. But each individual man will be
rewarded according to his works, which will follow him. Because the
State erected a flag on a bluff overlooking the sea, Sandy McBean was
not justified in shooting every blackfellow or gin he met with on
his run, as I know he did on the testimony of an eye-witness. This
is the age of whitewash. There is scarcely a villain of note on
whose character a new coat has not been laboriously daubed by
somebody, and then we are asked to take a new view of it. It does
not matter very much now, but I should prefer to whitewash the
aboriginals.

J. P. Fawkner wrote: "The military were not long here before the
Melbourne district was stained with the blood of the aborigines, yet
I can safely say that in the year in which there was neither
governor, magistrate, soldier, nor policemen, not one black was shot
or killed in the Melbourne district, except amongst or by the blacks
themselves. Can as much be said of any year since? I think not.