SEARCHING FOR OIL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2124, 6 May 1920, Page 1

SEARCHING FOR OIL.

QUEST IN AUSTRALIA.. Sydney, April 20. There is a seareh proceeding today in every likely part of the wide territory of Australia and her dependencies. It has been going on for the past three or four years, and although it cannot lie 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 speed up the adequate development of this country. The problem of how to overcome j distance is more truly a national | problem 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 one-shcep-toMhe-acre farming of New Zealand, perhaps, Iml a stock-raising business in which the animals are given a wide stretch ol country to roam over. Here and there, sandwiched between the dry regions, are fertile, well-watered slices of territory, where grass grows abundantly such as the great Barclay tablelands, lying south of: the Gulf of Carpentaria —and which would carry a large white population if access were made reasonably easy. The cost of building railways through the dry lands, and for the purpose of opening up limited areas in the 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, be developed without cheap and rapid transit, and the problem, it is now believed, will I);; solved by the motor lorry and the aeroplane. Each Slate has its own little public works policy; but some day soon it is hoped to get them all together at a conference, when a common policy for the development of main arterial roads will he adopted. Motor lorries already are supplementing the overloaded railways in places, and quite successfully so far as cheap carriage and prompt delivery go, but they are now greatly handicapped by very bad roads good stretches alternating with parts wellnigh impassable—by inability to obtain sufficient motor lorries and by the high price and limited quantity of motor spirit. It is recognised by everyone that an abundant supply of cheap motor fuel will assist enormously in the development of this country, and so the search goes on. Stimulated by an offered prize of £IO,OOO, men are piospocting in all parts ol; Australia for oil; and the British Government —through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which it controls and the Commonwealth Government,

are together spending £IOO,OOO in testing most excellent prospects in Papua and late German New Guinea. But the most hopeful reports come from scientists, who are obtaining motor spirit of good quality from vaious kinds of plants. Most encouraging results have been obtained from certain New Guinea vegetation and from sorghum, which can he grown in any quantity in Australia. One company, already formed to exploit these discoveries, promises a supply bf motor spirit very shortly.