SEVERE DROUGHT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23732, 12 August 1940, Page 11

SEVERE DROUGHT

A RAINLESS WINTER DECREASED WHEAT CROP DAIRY OUTPUT AFFECTED [from our own correspondent] SYDNEY, August 7 Scattered rain last week-end. although bestowing local benefits, did not relieve a drought position that is causing anxiety throughout New South Wales.' It is many years since the agricultural and pastoral outlook in this State was as unsatisfactory as it is today. No substantial rain has fallen, except in the Sydney area, for three months, and the position in many districts is becoming critical. A copious rainfall this month would merely transform the whole outlook from one of subdued anxiety to one of qualified optimism. Contract in Jeopardy In the wheat-growing and dairying •countries, the season's output is expected to show serious declines, so serious in the case of dairy produce that farmers see little hope of supplying the 100,000 tons of butter and 20,000 tons of cheese which the Australian Government lias contracted to send to the United Kingdom within the next 12 months. Supplies are now so low and production so liglit that New South Wales cannot even meet its own requirements. The liquid milk supply, too, has fallen off greatly, and normal quantities are being kept up with difficulty in Sydney. Natural teed is a\ ailable on few parts of the coast, dairy cattle being generally hand-fed. Last season's wheat crop in New South Wales was 7(3,000,000 bushels. Even under the best of conditions from now on, experts doubt if the coming crop could reach much more than hall that total. Every State Suffering Shearing is perhaps the only rural activity to benefit by the rainless winter, and the fact that most sheep in the western districts of the State are cutting to within 5 per , cent of last year s heavy yields indicates how relatively abundant feed was through most of the wool-growing year. . , Every Stato in Australia is suffering to some extent from lack of winter rain, so that the Australian-wide outlook is not cheering. Yet the experience of past droughts proves that no other country in the world has greater recuperative powers. Sydney, too, is drought-affected. Fairly good rains which fell in most metropolitan districts last month missed the catchment areas entirely. The drought on the' areas now equals the record of 1906-10, and, as population has relatively outgrown reservoir facilities, only heavy rainfall can now save Sydney from water failure. SIGHT A HANDICAP FORMER BLIND . MAN LOSS OF EMPLOYMENT [from our own correspondent] ' SYDNEY, 'August 10 Three years ago Roy Kendrick,. of Bondi, recovered his sight after 10 years of blindness, but.he finds it easier to shave without a mirror and to play the piano with his eyes closed. Since he has been able to see again, his senses do not accept what his eyes tell him. He cannot tell the speed of cars or how far distant they are. He is nervous of risks he had not known before. For three years he has tried in vain to adjust his regained sight to his new life. "I have my sight now," he said, "but still I am a blind man." Before he recovered his sight, Kendrick was known as the < 'Blind Entertainer," and earned his living on the stage, the lecture platform and the radio. "Now I have lost my value as a blind entertainer," he said, "and I have no experience to qualify for any other job. I have discovered that sight, for me, is a handicap."