Worst Australian Drought This Century

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30998, 2 March 1966, Page 17

Worst Australian Drought This Century

[From

DAVID BARBER,

N.Z.P.A. Australian correspondent]

SYDNEY, March 1.

Hundreds of swagmen are tramping the dusty roads of the Australian outback, but they are not jolly and the billabongs they camp by hold very little water for their billies.

They are victims of the worst drought in the 20th century—station hands, farm workers and labourers laid off by employers crippled in the “big dry” that has left a 2000-mile strip of Australia an empty waste.

A policeman in Walgett, in north-west New South Wales,

said over the week-end: “I haven’t seen so many men on the roads since the depression.”

The men, some carrying their belongings in battered suitcases and others humping the traditional blanket swag, are heading east in search of work. When they can they hitch rides in passing cars, but for most it is a long, hard, dusty and despairing tramp from town to town. But the towns offer little respite, for like the countryside around them, they are slowly dying—a cruel agonising death, seared by the sun and choked by the dust which there is no water to lay. Bourke, the biggest town in north-west New South Wales and 500 miles from Sydney, is gradually losing its 4000 population as the men take to the roads. Those that are left queue daily for food relief, while their wives listlessly struggle to keep the ever present dust out of their homes. “NO WORK” A council official said: “There is no work in the town. Bourke is as good as dead.” Once well-off graziers, citrus fruit growers and cattlemen in the surrounding country are leaving. Many have taken their stock on the roads in search of pasture. Those that remain, hand feed their stock with strips of foliage cut from trees, don’t bother to go into town any more because they have no money to spend. Mrs F. A. Johnson, wife of a grazier, said there were no sheep or cattle left on their property. “We’re just sitting around and waiting for rain. To look out the window it looks like death—just red sand,” she said. SEVEN SECTORS The 2500 residents of Cobar, 50 miles south, have water only for domestic purposes. The dust-covered town has been divided into seven sectors, with each sector allowed to hose dried up gardens and lawns for two hours once a week.

“Most don’t bother any more,” said the shire clerk. Mr A. F. Turner. “There isn’t enough greenery anywhere worth watering.” Mrs Denis Forbes, whose

family has a property 13 miles from Cobar, said: "The only thing surviving this drought is human life. “Even pine trees down the road have died, and I thought pines could survive anything.” Cobar’s 16m dollar copper mining plant, opened six months ago, may soon have to close, for it uses two million gallons of water a day. A townsman said if the mines closed. Cobar would die, for 90 per cent of the town’s commercial life revolves around them. NOTHING LEFT At nearby Nyngan, once fed by the now dried-up Macquarie river, a farmer said: “At the end of this week it will be every man for himself in a battle for survival. I won’t have a friend left.” Another grazier said his

stock was too far gone to be saved by rain in any quantity. “Rain now would only make mudholes for my sheep to die in.”

Time has run out for many graziers in the area, who have cut their losses by abandoning their sheep and cattle to their fate. “A number of them have stopped buying fodder because their sheep are in such poor condition it would be wasting money,” said one. The effect of the drought on all animal life is well known. A naturalist this week reported finding dead kangaroo joeys in their mother’s pouches because the parent’s milk had dried up. The human suffering becomes more acute every rainless day, and it is epitomised by the wandering swagmen.