short period in 1839
it was 120 pounds!!!

Whilst the agriculturists have been so earnest in the development of the
productive powers of the colony, another class of its inhabitants were
paying equal attention to its pastoral interests. The establishment of
stock stations over its surface followed its occupation, and a mild
climate and nutritive herbage equally contributed to the increase of
cattle and sheep that had been introduced. In 1844 the number of sheep
assessed was 355,700, in the following year that number had increased to
480,669, or an addition of 120,000. At the present moment there cannot be
far short of a million of sheep in the province, with an increase of
200,000 annually, at a moderate computation. The number of other kinds of
stock in the possession of the settlers, at the close of last year, was
as follows:--of cattle, 70,000; 30,000 having been imported during the
two previous years from New South Wales. The number of horses was
estimated at 5000, and of other smaller stock, as pigs and goats, there
were supposed to be more than 20,000.

It is impossible to contemplate such a prosperous state of things in a
colony that has only just completed the eleventh year of its existence,
without feeling satisfied that some unusually favourable circumstances
had brought it about. Had South Australia been as distant from the older
colonies on the continent as Swan River, the amount of stock she would
have possessed in an equal length of time, could not have amounted to a
tenth of what they now number. It is to the discovery of the Darling and
the Murray that South Australia owes the superabundance of her flocks and
herds, and in that superabundance the full and complete establishment of
her pastoral interests. I stated in the course of my preliminary
observations on the progress of Australian discovery, that when I was
toiling down those rivers, with wide spread deserts on either side of me,
I had little idea for what purposes my footsteps had been directed into
the interior of the Australian Continent. If I ever entertained even a
distant hope that the hilly country from which I turned back at the
termination of the Murray, after having floated on its broad waters for
eighty-eight days, might ever be occupied, I certainly never hoped that
the discoveries I was then making would one day or other prove of
advantage to many a friend, and that I was marking the way for thousands
of herds and flocks, the surplus