SIR WILLIAM MACLEAY MEMORIAL LECTURE, 1968 WILDLIFE CONSERVATION ,( H. J. Frith Division of Wildlife Research, C8IR0, Canberra, A.C.T. [Delivered 31st July, 1968] I. Introduction The distinguished career of Sir William Macleay in Australia, from 1839 to 1891, covered the period when the inland was being occupied by settlers and domestic stock. He was in the forefront of this occupation when, soon after his arrival, he took up country on the Murrumbidgee River west of the present town of Darlington Point. This country is now in the heart of the Riverina, the district that became the cradle of the wool industry, the location of many of the famous studs, the birth-place of many of the bush ballads and the folk-lore of shearers and jumbuks, shanties and riverboats. Yet, when William Macleay went there, only eleven years after Sturt had probed his way down the river, this was all in the future. We are told that as late as 1842 "very little was known of the country situated on the western side of the main road passing from New South Wales to Victoria on the lower Murray, Edward, Billabong, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan and Darling Rivers. The general impression was that all this lower country to the westward was too dry, too flat and too arid for any purpose, and the few who travelled over it described it as a miserable,, wretched, useless country" (Fletcher, 1893). The actual site of William Macleay's squatterage is not certain. There were many runs on the Murrumbidgee and the Macleays held several and, no doubt, some were registered in the names of financial backers rather than the man actually on the spot. However, by the end of the nineteeth century between Hay and Darlington Point the various squatterages, runs and blocks had_ consolidated into four stations, "Eli Elwah", "Burrabogie", "Toganmain" and "Kerarbury". The Macleays had had interests in all except the first, and Sir William had held "Kerarbury", part of which had formerly been known as "Uratta", since the fifties. "Kerarbury" has since been subdivided and, although a Kerarbury Station still exists, the block where the original homestead is thought to have been is immediately to the west and is known as "The Homestead". To a naturalist, however, of greater concern is not that the old homestead has disappeared and its location is not certain, but that most of the wildlife of the region has also disappeared and its original composition even is not certain. II. Small Mammals In many years' research on the Murrumbidgee plains, apart from rabbits, domestic stock and feral foxes and cats, the only mammals seen have been red and grey kangaroos, Megaleia rufa and Macropus giganteus, an occasional marsupial mouse, SmdntJioj)sis crassicaudata, and a few brush-tailed possums, Trichosurus vulpecula, wherever there is some timber. There are probably also Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, Vol. 93, Part 2
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