THE SECRET OF ARTESIAN WATERS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 4214, 19 June 1895, Page 5

THE SECRET OF ARTESIAN WATERS.

Perhaps the most valuable paper read before the Science Congress at Brisbane was that on the artesian waters of the continent by Mr Jack, the Government Geologist of Queensland. Many wild theories have been held as to the origin of these waters, which have practically added a new province to Queensland, and are opening a whole new horizon to the pastoral industry. They are supposed to come from New Guinea, from the Himalayas, from the Andean peaks of South America. Mr Jack and his assistants, however, have traced a huge formation of bibulous sandstone for 1,000 miles from the border of New South Wales to the Gulf of Carpentaria. It lies like a sponge, 5,000 square miles in area, packed in between an upper and a lower cretaceous formation. This huge, thirsty formation swallows up rivers whole. On the Darling River catchment, the mean rainfall is 22.14 in, but not quite one-sixtieth part of this really flows betwixt the visible river banks. Seventeen Darlings flow sunless and subterranean through the loose texture of the great Braystone formation for one that creeps visible betwixt the river bauks. The whole continent, according to Mr Jack, is leaky. The tropical rains of Western Queensland vanish from human eyes almost as quickly as they fall, but they creep in sliding floods beneath the surface, and ooze out, a ferment of bubbling springs, on the opposite edge of the continent betwixt Warrnambool and the Murray Mouth. Mr Jack's investigations go to prove that the artesian waters of Queensland are practically limitless, and they may prove a, more enduring source of wealth than either the silver leads of Broken Hill or the goldcu "blows" of Coolgardi<\ — ' Review of Reviews.'