ESSENTIAL MOTOR SPIRIT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17940, 20 May 1920, Page 2

ESSENTIAL MOTOR SPIRIT

AUSTRALIA'S QUEST.

(Fbom Oub Own Correspondent.)

There is a search proceeding to-dav 'in . every hkely part of the wiSeterritSy of 3 and her dependencies. It hu r been going on for the past three or iour : years, and, although it cannot be said to be much nearer success now than it was at the-beginning, it is being prosecuted with ew-inoreasing determination and keenness It m the .sealch for oil-—for fuel for the motor traction which, it is believed will enormously speed up the-adequato development of this country. * . The problem of how to overcome distance is more truly a national problem of ™ tralia than of any other land. The wide areas of the interior, though shown on the maps as desert, are capable of sustaining pastoral inaustry—not the comfortable one-sheep-to-the-acre farming of New Zealand perhaps but a stock-raising business in which the animals ere given a wide stretch of country to roam over. Here and there sandwiched between the dry regions, are fertile, well-watered slices of territory where srads grows abundantly— such as the great Barclay Tablelands, lying south of the bulf of Carpentaria,—and which would carry a large white population if access were made reasonably easy. The cost of building railways through the dry lands, and for the purpose of opening up limited areas in the far interior, was noi a good financial proposition before tho war and now it has made such projects difficult to consider. let the country cannot bo deVebped without cheap and rapid transitand tho problem, it is now believed will be solved by the motor lorry and the aeroplane. Each State, has its own fiddling little public works policy, but some day soon it to get them all together at a conference, when a common policy for tho dovelopment of main arterial roads will be adopted. Motor lorries already are supplementing tho overloaded railways in places, and quite successfully so far as cheap carnage and prompt delivery go; but they are now greatly handicapped by very bad roads, good stretches alternating- with parts wellnigh impassablo, by inability to obtain sufficienfc motor lorries, and by the high price and limited quantity of motor spirit. It is recognised by evoryono that an abundant supply of cheap motor fuel will assist enormously in the development of .his country—and so tho search goes on Stimulated by an offered prize of "£lO 000 men are prospecting in all parts of Australia for oil; and the British Government (through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which it controls) and the Commonwealth Government are together spending £100 (WO in testing most excellent prospects 'in Papua and late German New Guinea. But the most leports come from scientists, who are obtaining motor spirit of good quality from various kinds of plants. Most encouraging results have been obtained from certain New Guinea vegetation and from sorghum, which can be grown in any quantity in Australia. One big and powerful company, already formed to exnloit theso discoveries, promises a big supply of motor spirit very shortly.