THE NORTHERN TERRITORY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5, 6 January 1914, Page 7

THE NORTHERN TERRITORY.

[liy Electric Telegraph—Copyright] lUniteu Press Association..] (Received 9.2* a.in.) Sydney, January 6. Torrential rain lias fallen in tlie Northern Territory. Twenty inches fell at Rurrunde, causing Hoods and railway washaways. SOMETHINQ LiJKE A MOSQUITO! Melbourne. December 23. Captain Barclay, who recently returned to Melbourne after three years’ exploration work in the northern territory had an interview with the Minister for External Affairs. He has brought back with him five tons of luggage, including scientific exhibits and official papers. Among the vast collection are specimens of 100 distinct types of mosquitoes. One of them is so ingenious and violent that lie attacks humans in the middle of the back, just out of reach, and as it is about an inch long, with a venom, and the means to apply it in proportion, it makes its victims writhe under the puncture. The most immediately effective, though primitive, means of securing relief is to rub one’s back against a tree. Captain Barclay is still convinced that the Territory is suitable for white settlement, though he points out that people wjio want to go there to make a living must be prepared to give the country a reasonable trial. As complained of the cold in Melbourne yesterday when everybody was sweletring an estimate can be formed of what the resident of the Territory thinks a “fair thing” in the way of weather.