TERRORS OF THE WILD

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 37, 12 August 1930, Page 13

TERRORS OF THE WILD

TWO WOMEN TRAVELLERS

lA.' remarkable story of adventure in the -wildest parts of Australia is told by a Sydney paper of two womon who accompanied a party of metallurgists in the aeroplane Canberra, on a visit to the Green Parrot Mine, in Central Australia. The party encountered venomous snakes and deadly scorpions, and wore assailed by myriads of flies. Their food, which consisted of two-weeks-old bread, a few dog-biscuits, tins of corned beef, tea without milk, and the steak from wild bullocks, was always mixed with the gritty red sand from the desert. The two womon slept on beds of gum leaves collected by the black women. They always kept revolvers nearby, for fear that a native, wearing "murder shoes" of feathers, blood and human hair (to prevent trackers from telling the direction of their footsteps), might sneak upon them by night. On ono occasion they had to climb trees hastily to avoid being trampled to death by a herd of wild bullocks. Tho owner of the mine, with his thirty white anc\ black miners, lives isolated from the rest of the world, 220 milea from Alice Springs, They, have to go

four miles for water. Bound their camp dingoes howl all through the night, and in tho morning the screeching of crows takes the place of alarm clocks. While the aeroplane was at the camp it was intensely hot in the daytime and intensely cold at nights. "Death's-head" spiders, two inches in diameter, crawled all over the tent, and in the distance could be heard the clashing of spears (for natives were doing their war dances), and the screams of gins who were being beaten. One black girl from a head-hunting tribe was quite good-looking, and sported many bangles and other ornaments. She also had the scars of terrible wounds. All the natives were as black as ebony, and had beautiful teeth.