 Fenton expended large sums of money attempting to drain the estuarine swamplands which he hoped would produce ideal cropping fields.This venture failed and he resorted to moving further inland to the rich, although heavily timbered soils of the sloping ground to the west.Fenton is attributed to introducing the practice of ring-barking the large eucalyptus trees to allow light to penetrate the forest floor where the first domestic crops were grown.