The Drought.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 819, 25 January 1906, Page 7

The Drought.

Experiences in Australia. I From Dry-to Tery Dry. Inhabitants of this favoured land of Sew Zealand can have but the faintest idea of what a long-continued drought means to a country. Here, where the rainfall is plentiful and frequent, it is almost impossible to conceive what would be the result if the heavens were shut up for several years and no rain were to fall. But in Australia such an experience is only too frequently met with, and is one of the factors which will always tend to retard its development. Writing from Brisbane early last week the Rev. Sidney J. Baker gives a most .glowing account of the appearance of the country paesed through on the train journey up from Sydney. The fields all appeared green and fruitful, and it was hard to realise that only a short time ago all was a sunscorched waste. A conversation that he had from a man from " out back," however, opened his eyes as to the state of affairs in the far west, the heart of the island continent. Incidentally Mr Baker gained some slight idea of the enormous distances of the country. Ha was told of a man who, in the middle of the last great drought, brought oCOO head of cattle in the Northern Territory, away up by Port Darwin, and was two years and a half in driving them down to the Victorian border. He went along at about six miles a day, and at one point took them a stretch of 170 miles without sighting a single waterhole. Here he hurried them up by 40 miles a day, travelling day and night, and finished his long journey with only 8 or 10 beasts missing. The most interesting part of Mr Baker's letter, however, is that in which he quotes from a communication received from a Mr R. D. Barton, a prominent Narrabri pastoraiist, who giver a vivid description of his experiences with drought in Australia. He says:— " I have known many droughts in my time. In fact, with the exception of the years from 1889 to 1896, say seven years, the rest of my life as far back as I can remember has been from dry to very dry. I hare a record of the seasons from 1867. The first real visitation of drought I remember was in the early sixties, when I was for nine months travelling sheep about the country, trying to get them a station somewhere near what is now the digging township of Wyalong, but as no rain fell during the nine months, nor for some tithe after, sufficient to give water, I never got the sheep jto their destination. In 1877 and 1878 I lost over 2000 head of cattle and about 12,000 sheep—nearly all the cattle I had and more than half the sheep. From 1880 to 1886 was another time like the present, when there was no get away, every part of the State (or colony as it was then called) being dry to very dry. The present drought called on us in these parts at the end of 1896, and it has stayed with us ever since. Out of the nine thousand sheep I purchased then, I ionly sold 1600; the rest died. In 1898 I bought a run near Cassilis. My losses amounted to 22,000 sheep, and since then, though I only stocked at one sheep to six acres, my flock is reduced to about 10,000, half of which are being fed in Narrabri, and the other and they are so poor that we cannot get one to kill that weighs »over 201bs. so our diet is soup and stew. One of my neighbours called and dined with me last week. I apologised for the poor meat. He said : ' Why, I am living on sheeps' tongues and brains. 1 carry this,' producing a butcher's knife and steel, ' and every sheep I see fall down I kill and skin it and take home the tongue and brains.'

"There are two stages of mental suffering during a drought. The first stage is the worst. I call it active misery when one watches every cloud till it disappears, and fondly hopes it will come back with a change of wind. Fences are cut to allow the sheep in the paddocks with no feed to help to eat out the paddocks that are better, all the time hoping it will rain before everything is eaten. The last stage of active misery is when the sheep are turned into the horse paddocks, and the horses begin to die, or are sent to rented country and expenses begin. D uring this stage one is actively engaged both in mind and body. Then comes the second stage. No horses to work, sheep too poor to walk to water, and nothing to be done. This stage is what I call passive endurance. Sheep that could walk away are costing more than their wool to find, and those left at home dying too fast to skin. Young horse stock that you value crawl around the yards in the hope of getting a mouthful of chaff, but as they cannot earn it they are denied. The last resource has been tried, and there is nothing now but to wait in passive endurance, and wonder what will happen when it does ram. ' Will my financial institution carry me on ? How many good years will it take to put me in as good a financial position as I was ?'oThese are the thoughts that never leave you, night or day, and will continue to haunt you till the drought breaks and you have a talk with the bank manager. Another nightmare is: 'My lease is running out. What will the Government do with my holding ?' As I do not intend to touch on anything political in this letter, I will leave out that dream. One hears now on every [ side from the blatant politician, 4 Oh, but this is such a wonderful recuperative country. Look at other ! droughts. How soon we recovered.' But. now, as one that has passed through many droughts, I will point out why, in my opinion, tbe effects of drought are so soon forgotten. Borrow, float a loan of a few millions, ease the money market, and in the past there have always been found men to rush into grazing when the country looked green and luxuriant, and even the old hands among us forget that we ever had a- drought and put in more money, if they can raise it, for another gamble with the climate. But, if money is not to be floated, where is the recuperative marvel we hear about ? We have now three millions .to pay in interest yearly on what we have already borrowed, and we must borrow another five or six milmillions to carry on. Will we be able to float another loan when the drought is over to show the world what a wonderful recuperative country we possess ?"