AUSTRALIAN DISASTER Cattlemen reeling in face of floods

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33451, 5 February 1974, Page 13

AUSTRALIAN DISASTER Cattlemen reeling in face of floods

(.V.Z.F..1.-Kcu(i r—Copyright) DNEY, February 4. Australian television viewers pledged almost $1.25m during an 36-hour, non-stop appeal for the flooddisaster victims this week-end, boosting the flood-relief funds to almost $2.5m. At the height uf the “telethon,” viewers were pledging aid at a rate of §30.000 an hour.

should join to establish a national disaster organisation. He said that Australia’s most important cattle-breed-ing area, the Queensland Gulf country, was reeling under the ~ most ruinous floods in its history: it was impossible to* tell where the sea of the Gulf of Carpentaria or the mainland began. “Rivers, hundreds of miles apart, have reached heights never before envisaged, and have linked up in one vast,

The appeal launched by the Lord Mayor of Brisbane (Alderman Clement Jones), reached a total of §1,103,555 lasti night. In a statement last night,; the Minister for the North-[ ern Territory and Northern' Development (Dr Rex Patter-! son) said that the lessons ■ learnt from the floods made; it imperative that Federal and State Governments'

swirling volume of water,” Dr Patterson said. “Thousands of square miles of land and townships have been battered by a force impossible to comprehend. “Houses, cattle, station structures of all sorts, fences, and wildlife have disappeared under a vast, deep i sea stretching from horizon :to horizon in some areas. “It is impossible to even guess at the tremendous cattle losses and general damage, but the final figure, which will not be known for manj' months, until people re-enter the area, will be massive.”