A Voice From Coolgardie.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 94, 15 October 1894, Page 2

A Voice From Coolgardie.

The following letter received by a Feilding resident has been handed to us for publication : — ■ "Dear " I have been been in here about a week now waiting for something new to break out, but there is nothing stirring at all now. Things are coming to a very • pretty pass here, mainly owing to our " one possum " (can't even call it one horse) Government. We have had ab- ■ solutely no rain for months and there is likelihood of our getting the same treatment from Jupiter Pluvius for an indefinite number of months more. Water in tliis town has already jumped in price from 6to 9d per gallon, and at any moment may take another frenzied leap to ls and then from that to but enough, my harrassed brain won't bear the strain of these alarming suppositions, or perhaps I should say probabilities. And this, remember, is only the month of September. B* -iiful spring (?) What will it be like hrSttmmer time ? To improve matters, men are coming in fast from the outlying fields all driven in by one common curse— want of water. And worse still men are coming in in hundreds daily from the Eastern Colonies, I myself have counted as many as 60 men with one team alone, all attracted over here by the lies and exaggerated accounts of a few unprincipled boomsters. No doubt you will ask what has the Government been doing all this time? I will tell you. They have been spending money in pottering about making dams (of sufficient holding capacity I must admit) in a country where they have no assured rainfall, in fact it is within all the bounds of possibility that they will not get them full for two or three years. They have put oue bore down and succeeded in obtaining a limited supply of very brackish water which has to be condensed before it is fit for human consumption, and even that is now giving out, they having lately been compelled to refuse to supply several condensers with water. And this is the mainstay of Coolgardie at present. Hannans, second in population and importance to Coolgardie, depends upon a small salt lake for its water supply. It is also failing, and no wonder, for in addition to supplying the whole population of Hannans they have started carting it to Coolgardie, a distance of about 80 miles. If these gold fields had been in any other of the colonies the Government of that colony would have tried every means in their power to obtain water, for without that the fields cannot exist. If, instead or wasting money and even more valuable time in sinking potholes with the obsolete boring plant they aro now using, they sent over to Queensland or some other place for an efficient plant and secured the services of a competent man to manage it, I am quite certain the troublesome water question would soou be solved. And that despite the assertions of so-called experts that artesian water will not be found in or around Coolgardie. " A number of these gentlemen at one time held the same views with regard to the back blocks of Queensland and New South Wales, notwithstanding which excellent results were obtained in nearly every instance when the boring was continued to a reasonable depth. " From what I can hear, the Londonderry is indeed the richest reef yet discovered in Western Australia. As for the Wealth of Nations owned by Forrest and Co., there are some rumours go ng round about some very shady transactions connected with that much praised reef. lam sure that it is not quite so good as some of the Western Australian papers would have you believe. " Yours, etc., "A. J." Coolgardie, September 23rd, 1894.