'The Aborigines are really beginning to appreciate the comforts of a settled life. As a whole, the improvement on them, both physically and morally, is great. A few years ago the same people were poor, miserable, degraded creatures - those of them who had wives giving them to white men for money to get drink with, and those who had daughters the same. But this is now a thing of the past, at which they now blush when they hear about it .

Eight of the young lads who have been on the station from the commencement are real good farm servants; one in particular (McRea), a lad about seventeen, can plough, sow, and make cheese; in fact he can do anything that is required to be done on a farm or in a dairy. Another, Willie Parker, about twenty-one, is very handy at carpenter's work. These boys milk the cows in the morning, and during the day work on the farm, and in the evening go to school. The girls do all the cooking, washing, mending, and cleaning for forty children who are orphans, or have not their parents here.

I was in hopes that before this time to have this station self-supporting, but have failed to succeed. This is owing a good deal to the bad influence of Europeans, who tell them that they are only working for the Government, and it (the station) will be sold. But this evil will be partly remedied when they are paid for the amount of work they do. I purpose trying the cultivation of tobacco, which will be lighter work for them than the usual farm work, and, I trust, will pay better than growing so much grain. And I trust that, in the course of two years more, this station will be self-supporting.

In conclusion, I beg to say that the improvement, although not so much as I should have liked to see, intellectually, physically, and morally, is sufficient to convince the most sceptical that they can be improved, and that the race may be perpetuated.'