LONELY OUTBACK LIFE

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 August 1938, Page 3

LONELY OUTBACK LIFE

AUSTRALIA'S “FOREIGN" LAND. SYDNEY. July 3”. Australia ns are great travellers — especially Federal Cabinet Ministers. There seems to be something in the spacious freedom of Canberra that arouses the wanderlust in them, and there appears to be only one cure for it. —a tri)i to the dear old Motherland, from which they return refreshed, with many pleasant memories and just a few bills.

The Minister for the Interior. Mr. McEwen, however, is more modest in his desires, so he has been content to perambulate around a few thousand square miles of Australia’s vast Northern Territory. As Ihe world expects the Press to keep it informed of all that happens, and anything happens on a Ministerial tour, there have naturally been Press representatives with .Mr. McEwen. So Australians have been hearing about that great interior which to most of them is just, as "foreign” and just as unknown as Kamchatka or Timbuetoo.

After a day exploring the underground city that makes up the Mount Isa mines, the party moved into the great outback. They camped one night, but. with al! —or almost, all-— modern conveniences. In the vast silence of Hie spinifex they listened to Loudon broadcasting the progress of Hie Test mutch which, while it was miller way. banished sucli minor events a.s wars in China and Spain from page one of the newspapers to comparative “cable page” obscurity. While men. women and children wore being slaughtered in those countries.. the party happened by chance Io arrive al one camping place just, in time to save the lite of a lubra (aboriginal woman) by treating her promptly for snakebite.

FIGHT AGAINST DROUGHTS. One night (hey were entertained at a lonely homestead by a woman who. left a widow, has wrung a living out of the wilderness, lighting droughts in bad seasons, and recovering again in good ones, and herself educating her children. She is the kind of settler who knows what it is to husband water as something precious while fortunate Sydney folk use 1 ”0.00.0.000 gallons a day; to wash herself in the cupful with which she has washed the baby: then to wash i lie baby's clothes in the same water, and linallv to waiter with it the

few flowers which, with an invincible desire for something merely beautiful in life, she tries to keep alive while stock are dying in thousands in a drought. Her nearest neighbour is 75 miles away, and so flat is the country that she can see the headlights of a car at night while it. is 10 miles away. She counts herself fortunate now because “pedal .ireless” —that typically ingenious Australian invention of the outback. which enables transmission with human power—-has given her the means if necessary of bringing a (lying doctor speedily to her aid. One useful thing has already emerged from the Ministerial tour. Mr. McEwen has evidently not been caught by the current epidemic of “millionitis." The Federal Government is spending £43,00”.”00 in three years on defence, and the teachers would like it to find a new outlet for Federal expenditure by sparing just, a million or two for education, which, it must be admitted, is very niggardly treated by the States. The Sydney City Council is planning to lay out a million on the reconstruction of streets: the Sydney County Council is spending £2.500.00”. and will probably authorise as much more again, for extensions to Bunnerong electric power station: the New South Wales Government has great irrigation works under way. and is at long last completing the city underground loop at Circular Quay, where a tunnel dated 10 18 reveals how long the work is overdue. Il is considering a. start with a n underground railway to Bondi. and has before it a. report. submitted by foreign experts, for a £l5. 000. OOP State hydro-electrit scheme, based on the exploitation of the Snowy Giver and the electrification of several sections of the railways. RAILWAY NOT FAVOURED So someone had (bought: Why not just a couple of millions to build a railway in (he Territory to det elop (he great Barkly Tablelands? But Air. McEwen. after seeing that country- for himself, is apparently not at all enamoured of the idea. He has bluntly asserted that he could not find one leaseholder who favoured the plan, and that the way in which they are farming their properties—running cattle for sale and breeding cattle indiscriminately together, for instance—does not suggest that they deserve a railway to help them to get their stock quicker to the markets. So it does not seem likely that the .silence of the

Barkly will be broken by the puffing and whistling of locomotives for a long time yet. Such a tri)), of course, is not without its humorous incident--. When a party was inspecting Hie Territory's famous road train. Hte.v were (old Hie story of its lirst arrival. The train, which was designed by the British War Office, is a. very economical means of heavy transport, but is rather a fearsome looking monster, with its 24 wheels, and its hissing, beating engine noises. On its lirst trip a mechanic got down to reassure a gaping aborigine that it was not a “debbil debbil." Bait the aborigine get. in lirst. “Bai Jove," said’ he. "what a remarkable motorcar.” A jackaroo from Oxford had taught him English.