LIFE ON NULLABOR PLAIN.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1399, 31 May 1923, Page 2

LIFE ON NULLABOR PLAIN.

‘EAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.’ Some years ago one of the employees on the Australian east-west line sent an urgent and unusual message to the head office of the Commonwealth railways. It ran as follows:-- " For God’s sake move me somewhere —anwhere off this inmiT.ai plain. ! feel that if 1 stay It ere much longer 1 shall go mad.” Inquiry showed that this officer was stationed at a lonely spot far out on the 'Nullarbor Plain. To pass the time away he had devised a little game. He would gather the hits of limestone that lie scattered over the surface of the plain until he had a good-sized heap outside the door of his shack. Then he would throw ihe stones all away one by one. after which lie would gather them up again. This method of tilling in the time between the passage of trains began at length to pall and he sent out the S.O.S call quoted above. He was moved. Tito Xull-ahor Plain, which stretches for film miles from east to west, and probablv covers an area of 100.0b0 square miles, or one th'rrl the size of New South Wales, represents a landscape reduced to its simplest elements. The werid can show nothing else quite like it. There am no hills, no valleys, no rivers, no streams, no lakes, no trees, X tui miles, the longest stretch of : 's kind in die world, the line runs dean straight, without even rile slighi - -■t of curves. Ground Magics, ’!'!•( ;-•(■ critics who complain of the denial vunmree in Australian land -■rapes would love the plain. Fur 000 miles on end there is not a single gum -itee There arc l no trees at all bigger ilian those Gulliver sa v. in Lilli put. The largest of tile hardy acacias. which grow here and there, are not more t!:aii Halit fee: high. The very eagles, which are so plentiful on the plains Din; as many as fifteen are sometimes in sight at once, have !o build their nests on 'lie ground. .Mile after mile league after league, the vegetation of the plain consists of sa't-bush. wiUi its greyish-green leaves and blue-bush, which has leaves of a bluish-white, a colour like nothing else that grows on earth. The blue-! ush might well lie a plant from some spirti world that has strayed to earth.The limestone sucks up what rain falls —which 'is not much like a The aborigines could not even fall l ack on their device of obtaining water of sorts from the roofs of the (tees, since there are no trees. They can. however, lick the dew off the grass and hushes, when there is a dew, and they do. With the railway has come civilisation, and the aborigines are withering away before it. The influence of the railway is not confined to the tribes close to 'its route. Xews of a happy region where food can he obtained without work, and where all 'manner of marvels may be seen, has spread far northward into the interior. \<> Blackleg Blacks. The more sophisticated natives in the country near the line have come to accept the railway as it thing of course. They are great travellers when they can get a free ride. Xot long ago an aboriginal belonging to a tribe near lvalgoorlie travelled 700 miles by train to carry some kind of message to a tribe east of Ooldea. The readiness with which these untutored aborigines adopt some of our institutions shows a high degree of intelligence. When the line was being built a wild tribe, the members of which had'hardly seen a white man before, wandered down from the desert. The navvies found bargaining with (hem easy, for they would part with their most cherished possessions for a hit of tobacco or a bit of bread. The tribe wandered on, hut mouths later it returned. By this time its members had acquired a knowledge of money, and demanded half-crowns for things that they had previously traded away for next to nothing. A white man sought 10 heat down an aborigine, but the latter said proudly, ” We ail union now; union price half crown. Xo blacklegs amongst us.”