Bathing Without Water

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 63, 16 March 1938, Page 15

Bathing Without Water

WHAT PRICE HYGIENE? With the numerous hints on hygiene, the clinics and day nurseries, one wonders how the white mothers of the outback and the aboriginal women manage to keep their offspring alive. But beautiful baby specimens are to be found in the most remote places. During a compulsory visit to Oldea, on the trans-Australian railway route (I had got out of the train to have a look around, and it had gone on without me), I came across some of Australia's very best, states an overseas writer. Mrs Daisy Bates, a journalist and undenominational missionary, was in charge of them. There was no water, but the babies wore bathed daily. Their bath was the warm desert sand. They were rolled over and over, and came out as clean as whistles. They were as happy as little “sand boys." Mrs Bates has spent almost twenty years among the aborigines. There is very little infant mortality, she says. When water is scarce, the sand is dry, and adults as well as babies use it for bathing purposes. Sometimes one wonders about all this hygiene.