WEST AUSTRALIAN DESERT

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 17

WEST AUSTRALIAN DESERT

“ DRIES IBM SAHARA "

“ If a place where there arc a few straggly trees, a hunch of_ useless grass, ]ioiv and thou, and nothing elso but plenty of distance, spinuifex, sand, and heat, with a few blacks scattered over it cannot be called a desert because it has trees, thou the desert basin of Western Australia is not a desert,’’ said Air V. G. Clapp at a meeting of the Wellington Philosophical Society last week. “It is good for nothing, bub the Australians are very sentitive about the word desert. It is more hostile than the Sahara, _as in that there are a fair number of oases, some with considerable settlements. But in tho desert basin of Western Australia tliere are no springs that nro springs. One of the best-known springs has only been visited by three men, and rescue parties have olteu found springs sanded over. The water lies only in potholes and “ soaks ” in tho hollows of tho sandhills, and there it has to bo dug for.” As showing tho untrnversod nature of the country visited, Air Clapp described how tho blacks cautiously approached the explorers’ camp. First a woman appeared. Sho was not driven away nor treated harshly, and returned accompanied by an old man. _ These came back with others of the tribe, till there wore some thirty of them about after several days. Thou a member of the camp party stepped a few paces away from the camp to shoot a kangaroo.' With the report the blackfcllows grabbed their belongings and vanished in a hurry, never apparently having heard a gun fired before, nor did they again appear in that district.