On her arrival at the station the old two-roomed hut was plastered and whitewashed, additional rooms were built, and quite a neat little home was the result.

Seasons were good, and the young squatter might have gone on shearing sheep and selling fat stock till the end of his life but for the advent of free selection in 1861.
In that year the Legislature threw open all leasehold lands to the public for purchase on easy terms and conditions.

The idea was to settle an industrious peasantry on lands hitherto leased in large blocks to the squatters.

This brought down a flood of settlement on Kuryong.

At the top end of the station there was a chain of mountains, and the country was rugged and patchy--rich valleys alternating with ragged hills.