DUST MONSTER

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 23083, 23 December 1944, Page 6

DUST MONSTER

A Nightmare Journey Traveller’s Ordeal Day turned to darkness for an hour this afternoon as the dust monster of Victoria’s Mallee district went on a wild rampage up the Murray River Valley isays the special Australian representative of the “New Zealand Herald” writing from Swan Hill, Victoria, on December 9). Towns and hamlets, farms and houses were enveloped and buried beneath the giant's mighty mantle. They were W’hipped and lashed by his flailing fingers, and they were finally thrown forth into the smoky sunshine, red images of their former selves.

Lost also in the wilderness of dust was a motor-coach bound dowm the Murray Valley from Echuca to Swan Hill. It carried 15 passengers on a nightmare journey that none will soon forget. The coach left Echuca in mid-after-noon. Thermometers hovered at the 100 mark, but no breeze stirred to counteract the heat. The flies were insufferable. They ducked and dived and cheated every vicious slap. Meeting the Storm There was instant relief from heat and flies as the coach gathered speed. For 10 minutes everyone was comfortable and cool. Then the driver said: “Look! Isn't she a beauty?” Beauty or the beast, the dust monster was rolling heavily out of the west. At one moment it was an angry weal upon the clear horizon. Minutes later it was an awesome giant spanning the world in an ever-growing arc. Nothing stopped its bersek onslaught. Nothing could. A clear but violent wind formed a mad vanguard. This crashed against the coach, screamed at it shrilly and shook it from end to end. It darted through a broken window, soundly boxed a dozen pairs of ears, and brought tears to as many eyes. White, man-high eddies then came dancing up the road. They lunged and twisted to a devilish step, casting about them showers of sand and grit. They peppered the coach in a furious fit of temper and scurried on. The dust monster followed, hideously grim. It towered high into the heavens and stretched widely across the river, farms, and bush. It sang a song like thunder as it pushed across the plains. It shrieked and whistled, roared and rumbled.

A girl shouted: “For goodness sake, driver, turn back.” But why turn back? This raging monster could fast outpace a speeding motor-coach. Better to face its fury than be a fugitive over half Victoria. The driver put on goggles, changed down to low gear, and firmly grasped his wheel. So the monster struck. It leapt at the coach, pushed it off its course, let it return and repeated its attack. It tore at the trees along the roadside, bent them to breaking point, snapped off the twigs and sent the leaves in headlong flight. It scooped up the earth from the road and grassless land and carried it away like a snowball gathering snow. Light Blotted Out It blotted out the light. First the coach seemed to be moving in a dirty golden sphere. Then the intensity’ of the storm increased and the light changed from gold to murky red Finally it became a heavy sepia. With the light went visibility. The distant trees and paddocks soon faded. Next the roadside fences disappeared. The gloom increased and even the surface of the road could not be seen from the coach’s windows. The radiator tip showed only as a blurred outline. Clouds of the powdered dust swirled into the coach and drenched it thoroughly. It clogged the passengers’ eyes and nostrils and gritted between their teeth. For protection they hastily tied handkerchiefs over their faces. There was much coughing and gasping. A Queensland soldier returned from the Middle East had accepted the early stages of the storm with equanimity. When the dulling light forced him to discontinue reading he took more notice. Finally he said: “This is comparable with anything I have ever seen in the desert. In fact, it’s worse.” The driver of the coach was a veteran of the route and knew its every turn. At a walking pace he tried to struggle on, helped by guiding posts just off the metal at frequent intervals. Sometimes he drove right off the road into the shifting sand drifts; sometimes he had to stop. Once he swerved sharply to avoid a motor-lorry halted on the metal. He swerved again w’hen two pinpoints of white light suddenly appeared ahead. It was a motor-car creeping before the storm. A sudden stop revealed two figures in the wind-swept gloom. They were a mother and her infant son waiting on the roadway for fear they should miss the coach. The child was crying piteously under the sting of the flying grit. What the Sun Revealed Strange, ghostlike shapes appeared from time to time at the roadside as the light momentarily increased. They were the hazy forms of trees and posts and buildings. None was more curious in the image it portrayed than a great dead tree trunk. For a fleeting second it looked for all the world like the Grecian Discobolus, the discus thrower. Seven times within the hour the dust storm’s fury flowed and ebbed. Seven times the world was blotted out entirely and the light faded from the dirty yellow to the heavy sepia. To all intents the coach was seven times lost. Then the storm lifted with incredible speed. The sun shone again, although the air was still not clear. The coach pulled into the township to Kerang and the passengers alighted. Shaken •and slightly bewildered, they gazed at C 'each other in amazement. Each one was red from head to foot as with a furry moss. It was the mark of the dust monster of the Mallee.