DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 6737, 19 December 1900, Page 2

DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA.

An Appalling Visitation.

The Melbourne correspondent of the Otago daily Times states most dreadful accounts continue to reach us oflheierriblcdroughtwhicbhasblighted millions of acres of pastroral country in tho interior of Queensland and Now Soulh Wnlos, Lord Lamington, tho Governor of Queensland, has recent); been on a tour through tbo intorior. He had previously scon something of a pretty bad drought out Cannamulla way, but bis picture of his present experience is simply appalling. "You ask me," he said to an interviewer,'' what about dead sheep end cattle P I only say wo certainly did sec dead Bhcep. round Wibton , but after that wo hardly saw any Afr" or cattle, cither dead or alire.BKo wholecounlry.is in a pitiable condition, and most of it was as bare as Flindersstreet. We went as far as Cloncurry by Cobb and Co.'s coach, and thence a distance of 250 miles to Camooweal by police horses. Out of 110 horses which were brought into requisition during tho trip, there was not onrt' that was not knocked up. Words can hard); describe the slate of the country. In a few places wbcro the July raini made a little grass thero was no water, and where there was water thoro was no Brass. What the country may. prove when it is properly irrigated or watered by bores, I cannot say, but at the r ~sout timo it is a desolate waste as Wis tbo eyo can reach," In tho wholoWso miles Lord Laraington saw only'four human inhabitants

This is a dreary picture, surely, to . * Now Zcalanders who revel in so bountiful a water supply, New South Wales, iuwliat is known as tho Western 1 district, towards tho Queensland border, is as bad-it could not probably be wotbo. A Parliamentary Commission has been taking evidence about the state of the country. Ono witness after anothortold the same sad story of misery and isolation. Mr James 11. Boolhby, statin inspector to Dalgcly and Co., Limited, said the firm had eight station properties in the Western district of Wevr South Wales, on which thero had been a reduction in the five years of drought of 2,319,109 sheep. Thorc bad/been practically no lambing for five years, and to re-stock the country fresh stock would have to be put on at a very heavy' cost. On a recont visit to two of the stations, Milroy and Moorabilla, ho found the •_ country "on abomination of desolation," * The Company in two years paid a rental of !ls ljd per head merely for standing room for the sheep there, and agistment charges, scrub-cutting, and forago increased the cost to 6s 3d per head, . The natural inquiry is, why on earth do people go upon such country'; why not leave it to the drought ? Tho answer is that, given a good season or two, and you cannot put enough sheep on tho grass to eat it down. The present five years' drought is the severest in history. Let there come a couple of good Reason aud there is not natural sheep county in the world equal to it. Then the squatter overstocks; he cannot overstock for tho good years, but tho bad year that is bound to follow kills off his sheep by the thousand; the banks and the financial companies step in (to their own exceeding loss too often), and everything isjfn and disaster. • jm \.