RAILWAY TO EXTEND HALF WAY ACROSS CENTRAL AUSTRALIA

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6863, 19 March 1929, Page 8

RAILWAY TO EXTEND HALF WAY ACROSS CENTRAL AUSTRALIA

Importance of Water Bores' SYDNEY, March 7. By Juno next Aline Springs, that quaiut little town amid the desert lands of Central Autsralia, will be a railway terminus, and the dream of the North-Sout.h line across tho heart of Australia will have half come true. Les sthan 100 miles of line require to be laid to Alico Springs, and the platelayers are advancing at the rate of a mile a day. A railway a few years ago would have been a marvel in Central Australia, after camel journeys that took weeks, and sometimes months, hut motor transport has coinc in the meantime to conquer the sandy deserts. Nevertheless, a weekly mail, and a service that will take them to Adelaide in three days without having to dig themselves out of sand drifts, will seem like the end of their isolation to the people of Central Australa. .Living is bound to be cheaper with a reduction of the £SO a ton freight charge which is at present added to the cost of most commodities. Fruit, ice, vegetables and ficsh foods, which the dwellers of the cities tako for granted, should soon be available to those who live far inland. As an illustration of the cost of getting supplies into Central Australia, the price of petrol in Alice Springs is more than £2 a case. It costs 16s. in Adelaide or Melbourne. The difficulties of building: the line from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs have been less of engineering and more of commissariat, There are few bridges, no mountains to tunnel or valleys to span; the cuttiugs are not deep, nor are the embankments high, and by. a system of momentum grades the variations in surface are used rather than removed. Water has been tho problem of the engineers. Men, horses and locomotives used up thousands of gallons a day in a country where there is no surface water. So bores have had to be put down. When the line had progressed beyond Charlotte Waters a new bore was urgently necessary. The engineers had a “hunch” that there was water below tbe Finke Eiver bed. They used the divining rod, and it reacted favourably. Against the advice of Government officials a boro was put down and at 700 ft. tho purest water in the country was found. It spurted in a steady flow. Now 40,000 to 50,000 gallons a day are carted from it by the tank cars. Had the water failed _ all the men would have had to be withdrawn from the line and sent .back to water. Now another bore is being sunk further ahead and the line is creeping toward it. Progress is rapid; it must be to beat the ever shifting uand. Gangs work from both ends of the earth-works. The lail truck goes on as each new section is ready and the platelayers with it. No sooner are the rails down than the truck passer over them. Another truck follows close behind, and the rails are ballasted at once.