A DESSERT IN QUEENSLAND.

Inangahua Times, Volume IV, Issue 7, 10 December 1877, Page 2

A DESSERT IN QUEENSLAND.

The whole of West Moreton (says the Observer) is a dessurt, witboat a solitary oasis except some swamp around whose moist edges there is a little vegetation. The whole of that immense district of the Main Kaugo from Nanango to Mount Lindsay, and downwards to the coast, is barren of vegetation, as if blasted by the simoon tlmt withers all before it. On Franklyn Vale the cattle have died in hundreds and away towards Normanby, Frassifern, Duuffpudau, Cochin, and away to Maroon and down to the Losj3n, there is the same dismal rale of desolation and destruction , and away towards Cressbrook, Durundur, and all the country lyinss on the head of the Brisbane Eiyer, there is a similar story of devastation. Throughout the whole district the cattle

are daily dying in scores, nnd every creek end gully shows its long array of rottini? caroacses. In one little waterhole not tetl yards in diameter, on the Upper Bremer, we noticed twelve dead sheep and two pnws • and wherever wnter is found, there ■frill also be discovered one or more car* casses of sheen, cattle, or horses— for horses have died in considerable numbers. Gloomy as tbe state of things \ra* known to bo. we had no idea that the effects of the drought were so general nnd so disastrous as they really vrere. We have been through the country between Ipswich and Franklyn Vale, and there were dead aVid starving sheep, cattle, and horses all along; the road ; and as one port of the district may be eonsif ered as index to the remainder, that one ghastly dreary picture would enable us to conceive the rest. To the farmer it means dend slock and no crops the two ominous phrases wliich are to him expressive of present w prospec* tive ruin.