TROPICAL AREAS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLIV, Issue XLIV, 21 May 1924, Page 5

TROPICAL AREAS.

FUTURE OF AUSTRALIA

GREAT EMPTY SPACES

BY CABLE--PEESS ARSOOTATTON—COPYBIGHT

SYDNEY, May 20. Mr Griffith Taylor, Professor of Geography at the University, lecturing on the future settlement of Australia, declared that the climate of arid tropical areas was one of the most varied and unreliable in the world. He refused to believe that Australians could live -under climatic conditions which were fatal to white people in other parts of the world. Australia's desert was larger than any other in th© world except the Sahara, yet a lot of short-sighted, non-patriotic people were trying to force the Federal Government to spend millions to open these empty spaces. We should not,spend a penny of public money to help settlement in those most unsuitable regions. At present 91 per cent of the population was settled along the outer areas, and he was of the opinion that future settlement should follow the same lines. There was plenty of room for 20,000,000 in Australia, but not 'n the great empty spaces of Central and Western Australia or in the trowcal north and west.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.