DESERT VICTIMS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21715, 24 February 1936, Page 4

DESERT VICTIMS

LOST IN AUSTRALIAN INTERIOR waterless sun-parcked '■.'.*".. ~;[ : . land/ ■■■■..;.■.-.",%, - • ,■-. ;■ V*- "•■■..'■'■''■ (PROM OUR OWN COSRBSPOWDEHT.) SYDNEY, February 13. Central and north-west Australia, in the intense heat of summer, generally a -few of the lives of the adventurers who challenge its arjd wastes, and this summer has oeen no exception. During the last week or so two men have perished. John Shaw, 50, prospector, tried to run the guantlet through the heat and the baked, waterless desert of the north-west, but *his death from thirst was reported to the Commissioner of Police.;. in Perth. Shaw, who was an Englishman who had spent many years on the goldflelds in the north-west, knew every inch of the country, and every waterhole; For some months he had been combing old alluvial fields, but it was lately known that he intended striking away from the. beaten tracks to seek a creek-bed which native rumour credited with holding much gold. Travelling light as he always did, he went out. Whether he reached his hoped for El Dorado and what he found there are beerets noV locked with him. It was on his return journey in a frantic effort to defeat the hot and waterless terrors of a district which had not known rain for many months that tragedy overtook, him. Every water hole he went to was dry. Despairingly, he pushed on, to the next, and then to the next, to find nothing in them but hard stmcracked bottonis. No one will ever know' the acute miseries Shaw suffered during the last few hours before he collapsed. He was' found unconscious 40 miles from the coast. His tongue was black and swollen. The sun had burned.away the skin from his face, hands and arms, and his clothes were.ragged and torn. Although rushed- to hospital ft, was too late. Shaw was dead. . Picked ,up . uhddnaicOus near Kelly Well,, Charles Simmons, 89, miner, was brought,to Tennant Creek, and died a few hours later. Simmons had set, out- "Without a waterbag on the 60-mile . trek to Bonny Well, where he Jwas employed by a gold corporation, and had covered less: than«hett vthfe journey when he collapsed % the intense heat/