Planes Drop Food To N.S.W. Outbade Farms Isolated By Floods

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22889, 8 March 1949, Page 5

Planes Drop Food To N.S.W. Outbade Farms Isolated By Floods

(N.Z.P.A. —Reuter—Copyright.) (11.15 a.m.) SYDNEY, March 8. Efforts are being made to get food through by jeeps to station homesteads isolated by torrential rains in the north-west corner of New South Wales.

In three days this area, with an average rainfall of less than six inches annually, has received falls of over 10 inches.

In messages received by pedal radio, settlers say

the area is like an inland sea,

Over 700 people on 60 stations are cut off from food supplies and medical help. 1 The water is 3ft. deep In some homes and rising floods threaten others. Today planes are parachuting food to stations which have made pedal radio appeals for help. A Norseman aircraft yesterday flew 14001 b of food into Tibooburra which was down to its last bag of flour and short of several essential foods. The plane then landed and was immediately isolated by floodwaters. The pilot reported that the road from Broken Hill to Tibooburra was invisible for stretches of up to 20 miles. Quagmire of Red Mud The officer in charge of the “flying doctor” radio station at Broken Hill reports that most of the North-West Territory is a quagmire of thick red mud. The flood area is bounded roughly by the South Australian border fence and a line along the Broken HillTibooburra road into South-West Queensland. Tire flooded ground is all grazing country and the homesteads are far apart. In the area where stands the tree on which the explorers, Burke and Wills, carved their last message before dying of thirst and exposure, the water is now 17ft above normal.