FAMINE OF WATER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 278, 26 November 1935, Page 8

FAMINE OF WATER

* TENNANT CREEK GOLDFIELD VASELINE SWALLOWED TO SAVE LIFE Tennant (’reek, the newest goldfield in Australia, is not far from the centre of the continent —a place of blistering heat and dry barrenness. There is little doubt now about the richness oi some of the reefs there, and a few hundred miners and a dozen or so women have formed a settlement, there, which the more optimistic hoped would be the forerunner of another Kalgoorlie. The building of a 400-miles pipeline brought the essential waler to Kalgoorlie and enabled the exploitation of its riches. But Tennant Creek, where the creek is practically always dry, will probably never have such a pipeline built for it. The settlement is practically dying of thirst. Very little rain falls there — a matter of a couple of inches a year. Federal Government and private contiactors have put down bore after bore in an attempt to find an underground supply, and have found only a meagre (low of brackish unusable water. So when the hot weather comes Tennant Creek just parches. It has been undergoing such an ordeal during the last week or two, and the failure of the water and the extreme heat coming so early in the summer has caused concern for the plight of the settlement later in the hot season. Companies operating there are sending parties in search of possible soaks along old creek beds. The Euro Gold Developing Company obtained haif a 44-gallon drum overnight from such a soak, but apart from that, the search has been without result. The aid of old prospectors and natives is being sought. Unless rain falls shortly or one of the three bores being sunk by the Government turns up trumps, drinking water and water for compressors and milling purposes will have, to be hauled more than 50 miles from Bonney Well. Coinciding with this alarming shortage of water and a fortnight of days on which the temperatures have topped the 100 mark, comes the news that the hotel has run out of beer. This beer famine is expected to last several days, until supplies reach “the Creek” from Adelaide. Meanwhile, one man has “struck it rich.” He had a large private supply and the miners, getting to hear of it. beseiged him and paid him 5s a bottle for it. One man, James Riordan, journey Riordan was picked up almost unconnarrow escape from dying from thirst? Roirdan was picked up almost unconscious and weak from thirst, 30 miles south of Newcastle Waters. He revealed that he had been forced to swallow vaseline when his water ran out. The temperature around Newcastle Waters, he said, was JlB degrees in the shade, and in half a day more than a third of the water in his bag disappeared through evaporation. Mr. Harold Nelson, a former AI.P. for the Northern Territory, claims that water bags in the Territory have been responsible for more tragedies than anything. A few years ago the heat absorbed all the water in his spare water bag, and, when his motor-cycle broke down, he was forced to drink the oil out of the sump before help arni it ...