BUSH TRAGEDY.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18055, 23 April 1924, Page 11

BUSH TRAGEDY.

NEW ZEALANDER'S FATE. (FBOM OUB OWN CORBBSPONDENT.) SYDNEY, April" 10. Every trainman dreads death from thirst because it is one of the risks that every bushman takes, and many have come close enough to know its horrors without having actually perished. So it was that many a breast throughout the length and breadth of "Australia's open spaces" thrilled with poignant pity a day or two ago when the matter-of-fact press telegrams flashed over from the west the grim details of how "Old Tom," as Thomas Farrell, a native of New Zealand, has been familiarly known for years, about the stations of ihe nor'-west of the continent, had died of thirst. Old Tom was a station cook, and like all of his restless type, he would stop so long in a billet, and then off he would go, his earnings in his pocket and bis swag on his back. The nor'-west is a land of vast distances, and anyone who travels on foot between the Gascoyne stations takes his life in his own hands. Bu% Old Tom knew the country well, and when he set out on his last tramp early last month with his canvas water bag well filled, none of the Mount Augustus station hands feared for his safety. But last week the discovery of his body with the empty water bag thrown a yard or two away told its own grim story. Apparently the old man knew that he was on the Landor station, and had vainly sought for the windmill which he knew could not be fa.r off, but in his weakened state his bushman--ship failed him, and he could not find it. As a matter of fact the windmill which would have saved his life was less than half a mile from where he lay down and died. But he could not see it, for a sandhill covered with tall scrub intervened. Without doubt, however, he was making for the Dongarra windmill when fatigue and suffering overcame him, and so he was found by a station hand who chanced to be riding to the mill a day or two afterwards. A black was sent on horseback to the nearest station, and the Carnarvon police were told of the discovery. Three hundred miles of rough riding brought a constable to the scene and the unmistakable evidences placed before the local coroner on his return resulted in one of the saddest verdicts that Australian out-back coroners have to write—that death was caused by his perishing from want of water.