DROUGHT DEMON.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16320, 2 January 1924, Page 7

DROUGHT DEMON.

GRIP ON THE NORTH-WEST. WORST FOR 46 YEARS. INVERELL (N.S.W.), Dec. 20.—After a week of blazing weather, culminating in a record hot day yesterday, the whole of the near north-west distinct woke to sco a cloudy sky this morning. Light, intermittent rain fell in patches between (Hen Innes and More©, .and farther north and west. It looked early to-day af if steady rain was working up, and the signs of the coming deluge were waited with an almost hysterical delight by the sheep men in the outlying districts. The drought, in some places, lias been the severest and most prolonged in 45 years, and only the bore drains of the irrigation Commission, and the adoption of general artificial feeding, made possible by the advent of the motor truck, have saved the countryside in the Moree and Walgett districts from a disaster which would have rendered that of 1902 insignificant. Feeding hag been carried on on a tremendous stale, and one agent for artificial fodders declared yesterday that ]lis disposals in seven weeks were valued at £67,000. Even at that, almost half the sheep in Die Moree pastoral protection area have been sold or sent to the tableland relief country, and graziers have suffered tremendous losses through the failure of this year's lambings. The countryside in the pastoral areas, especially where the pasturage is mostly herbage, is indescribably bare. To say that for 50 miles from Moree along the Mungindi line, past Garah, there is not a visible blade of grass in paddocks is literally true, though there is a good deal of mimosa country in this district and a fair quantity of low edible scrub. 70 MILES! FOR A BATH. The water shortage has severely affected everything along the border. On a broiling hot day last Sunday, the supply at Moree gave out, and there was no bath water. The situation was given an ironic twist by the arrival of two residents of Mungindi for the purpose of getting a bath. The supply was restored on Monday, Travellers from across the Queensland border say that the drought is worse in Queensland than in New South Wales, and that even in the Gulf of Carpentaria, which generally does not suffer from severe dry spells, there have been heavy losses in stock.' The most hopeful feature of the whole situation has been the normal arrival this year in the far north of the monsoonal rain which is generally ijje prcciirspr of falls in Now South Wales. Yae the past five years the monsoon has been nlarmingly irregular. Homo postures of northern New South Wales have not had a spot of rain for months until to-day. Stations where the normal average fall has been 22 inches over a period of years have this year only had eight, and even the Invcrell district has had a maximum of 14. Along the western border it will need at least two inches as a preliminary fall to do any real good. If that can be #j}*jjred the herbage will recover quickly.