ESSENTIAL MOTOR SPIRIT.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 May 1920, Page 3

ESSENTIAL MOTOR SPIRIT.

AUSTRALIA’S QUEST. SYDNEY, April 20. There is a saarcli proceeding today in every likely part of the wide territory of Australia and her dependencies. It lifts been going on for the past three or four years, and although it cannot be said to be much nearer success now than it was at the beginning,"it is being prosecuted with ever-increasing determination and keenness. It is the search .for oil—for fuel for the motor traction which, it is believed, will enormously spee 1 up the adequate development of this country. The problem of'bow to overcome distance is more truly a national pro- . blein of Australia than of any other land. The wide areas of the interior, though shown on. the maps as desert, are capable of sustaining pastoral industry—not the comfortable oue-sheep-to-the-acre farming of New . Zealand, perhaps, but a stock-raising business in which tlie animals are given'a wide stretch of country to l’oam over. Here and there, sandwiched between tlie dry regions, are fertile, well-watered slices of territory, where grass grows abundantly such as the great Barclay Tableland, lying south of the Gulf of Carpentaria—and which would curry a large white population if access were nmde reasonably easy • . » The cost of building railways through the dry lands, and for the purpose of opening up limited areas

in tlie far interior, was not a good financial proposition before the war, and now it has made such projects difficult to consider. Yet the country cannot lie develope 1 without cheap and rapid Irnnsit— and the problem, it is now believed, will be solved by the motor-lorry and the aeroplane. Each State has i• s own fiddling little public works policy; hut some day soon it is hoped to get them all to- ' getlier at a conference, when a common policy for Ihe development of main arterial roads wlil he adopted, Motor-lorrie , already, are supplementing tlie overloaded railways iu places, and quite successfully so far as cheap carriage and prompt delivery go bet they are how greatly handicapped by 1 very bad roads—good stretches alternating with parts well-nigh impassable—by inability to obtain sufficient motor lorries, and by the high price and limited of motor spirit. It is recognised by everyone that an abundant supply of cheap, motor ■ fuel wlil assist enormously in the development of this country—and so the jVeai’ch goes 1111. 'Stimulated by an offered prize of £IO,OOO men aro prospecting in all parts of Australia for oil; and tile British Government (through the AnglorPeisian Oil Company, which it controls) and the Commonwealth Government are together spending £IOO,OOO in testing moat excel lent. prospects in Papua and late German New Guinea. But the most, hopeful reports come from scientists viJiQ are obtaining motor spirit f good quality from various kinds of plants. Most encouraging results have been obtined from oertnin New Guinea vegetation, and from sorghum which can be grown in any quantity in Australia. One big ar.d powerful company, already formed to exploit these discoveries, promises a- big supply of motor spirit very shortly.