Land scheme a new battleground

With the dawn of Anzac Day imminent, it is appropriate to recall that for many Great War veterans who made it back to Tasmania their battles were far from over.

These were different times. You came back from the war and you were expected to get on with your life.

Post-traumatic stress disorder? No such thing.

In 1916 the Liberal Government of Sir Walter Lee introduced the Soldier Land Settlement Scheme, which was intended to set the veterans up with a new life on the land, as if farming, often on virgin land, would be second nature to them.

It was a failure of such epic proportions that it led to a Royal Commission here in 1926 headed by Chief Justice Sir Herbert Nicholls. It concluded that the scheme “was such that great losses of money were certain and that of the 2000 men to be on the land few could hope to succeed”.

By 1929 of those original settlers, only 777 remained on the land, a survival rate of 39 per cent, yet in Victoria the survival rate was 83 per cent.

Thirty-two years ago, now Edith Cowan University academic Quentin Beresford (who wrote the recent The Rise and Fall of Gunns Ltd) wrote a paper on Tasmania’s World War 1 Soldier Settlement Scheme in which he said:

“Indeed, the majority of soldier settlers became victims of short-sighted and inept government administration. Hundreds were forced into financial ruin…”

The scheme, to give any Tasmanian soldier returning from the Front a free piece of land, was clearly well-intentioned “for those who have returned after fighting for us” but it was ill-conceived. They received no training; there was no qualification required; many of the soldiers would have been suffering PTSD; some were still carrying debilitating injuries from the war.

The Royal Commission found that many of them needed a complete change, a complete rest rather than the stresses of trying to build a farm from scratch.

The other disturbing aspect of the scheme was the land they were given.

The government buying private land caused prices to be inflated but the rent payable by the new farmer was based on that artificial capital value.

They were given £500 pounds for stock, equipment and improvements. Rent and interest payments were waived for the first year and tax for four years. They paid four per cent interest on any loans.

A Scottsdale settler wrote:

“How can you sit there in the offices and live on the swett (sic) of a returned soldier…and see [him] flogg his life away, then send in a demand for rent which is impossible to pay. No man in Scottsdale or anywhere else could carry the burden and pay the rent asked for.”

The farms were often too small to be viable, averaging 42 acres at Richmond and 25 acres at Penguin and Oatlands.

Those who were trying to clear Crown land to establish their farms faced a near impossible task, limited to 100 acres when 400-500 acres was deemed to be the minimum viable lot.

Many had to seek off-farm work to put food on the table and it meant the farm development work was neglected or just didn’t occur.

The exodus from Tasmanian soldier settlement farms was disastrous: 90 in 1021, 205 in 1922, 285 in 1923, 227 in 1924, 214 in 1925 and 197 in 1926.

A similar scheme enacted after World War 2 was more successful because more stringent qualifications were applied.

By the 1960s about 28 per cent of the 551 post-Second World War settlers had failed but the scheme was deemed successful and many of those farms continue to be highly productive today.

However, for the soldiers who returned to Tasmania after the Great War it was hardly the vision splendid they had imagined, yet who gives them a second thought today?
TFGA president Wayne Johnston