QUEENSLAND DROUGHT

Shannon News, 3 December 1926, Page 3

QUEENSLAND DROUGHT

$ VIVID PEN PICTURES. HEAVY LOSSES AND SUFFERING. SYDNEY, Nov. 11. Aboard a motor truck, which has travelled from Melbourne to Darwin, and is now returning to the Victorian capital is a journalist who is representing southern newspapers. He has given some fine accounts of life in out back Australia!-' but none has surpassed the weird picture he paints of conditions he found in drought-stricken Queensland. He telegraphed his message from Rockhampton, after the truck had passed through widp: regions of north-western and ceiiwal Queensland, which have been in the' grip of a long and severe drought, only partially broken by rains a couple of months ago. The journalist wrote: “The drought is almost the only topic of conversation in Queensland. At every place visited by the truck the party has been told of heavy losses and, great suffering-. It is said that many sta-' tion owners are in that position only nominally. They are really managers for the-financial institutions tp. which they are hopelessly in debt. There are many gloomy predictions of what will happen when the drought breaks and the financial institutions begin to recover the money they have advanced. One large station was said, to have lost 20,000 cattle, and another station mustered, only 400 out of 12,000 sheep. One of the most pathetic sights seen'by the party was all that some one had attempted to move. The mothers were dead, and the 1 newlyborn calves were left to starve to death. In the Northern Territory, dingoes, eagles, and crows were seen attacking beasts that were not yet dead. They were being torn to pieces while they stood, and the empty sockets from which the eyes had been plucked seemed to plead for an end to their agony. Where possible a merciful bullet was despatched to end the beast’s suffering. A station owner near Rockhampton said that for four months he had not had the moral courage to inspect 60 square miles of his land. The monotony of. the sunbaked country made it easy to appreciate why Arctic explorers took bunches of brightly-coloured ribbons with them to relieve the strain on their eyes. "The thin green grass that was bravely pushing a way through the hard soil between Winton and Longreach was a welcome sight. The grass was only a patch, however, and the country from Longreach to the coast was as dry as any In the Northern Territory. Even in the midst of this desolation the Australian joked. At Boulia, where it was said that there had not been a good shower of rain for five years, the party inquired about a strange bird that was flying overhead. Someone promptly said that the birds were really frogs that had given up hope of ever being able to swim, and in desperation had grown wings.

“The drought has brought about a boom in the motor trp.de, for every station is carting feed. At .Winton seven motor trucks were gold by one agent in a day. A station owner said that so far this year he had paid £4OOO to one carrier for carting feed 50 miles from the railhead. The stations began artificial feeding on the expectation of early rain, and soon they had spent so much money that they had to continue to retrieve some of the loss.”