Another Drought Story.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XV, 11 April 1903, Page 1035

Another Drought Story.

We in New Zealand can’t realise what drought means. Here is just an ordinary Australian bush tale, by “C.A.R.0.,” a city girl: One drought item impressed itself hauntingly on my mind. It happened on a Lachlan station, not a month ago. The heat had been —well, just the ordinary bush heat, which ean give points to all others. A drove of wretched cattle had been driven through the run, on a forlorn hope of grass further down. One poor suffering beast, gaunt and dying, had fallen out, unable to travel, and been left behind. Bush nature is far too callous to kill for mercy’s sake; the crows alone, are attentive to the dying. All the men had left the homestead early on their usual weary rounds, and, in the midst of a glaring, blazing noon, I heard a puppy yelping its heart out in the yard. Crawling amid protests from beneath the bed (always the coolest place), I trotted kitchenwards, and, peering through a ■window, saw a. pitiful sight. In the yard stood the dying bullock; it must have got upon its feet and stumbled to the house. It was the most awful-looking thing! Just covered with shrunken skin, as of a long dead beast; one foot staked badly, and caked with blood and flies. It stood, sawing its head at the puppy, and its eyes were wells of blood. An iron tank, filled with water, stood in the corner of the yard, beneath what had once been a trellis of vines. The beast made its way over, and, smelling the water, made a wild attempt to get it by knocking the tank down—it was too feeble to do any damage—and then fell to licking the iron with a black, withered tongue. A dish being handy, I lowered it from the window, and filed it by means of the dipper.

The poor beast smelt the water directly and in its awful hurry upset it upon the ground. I will never forget, aa it licked the dust ravenously, its moan of utter pain. I snuffled from sympathy, and ventured a small tub next, throwing water into it from above. How it drank! Its head, being in the tub, got in the way of my aim occasionally, but neither of us minded. At last it could drink no more, and simply slobbered its mouth in the water. I "left it unable to drink, but keeping guard over the tub. All day it stayed, and I kept it supplied. When the men <cturned they took it away, ami shot it in the paddock. As the report rang out I was packing, with a swelled nose, for home.