DROUGHTS AND FLOODS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 283, 20 February 1928, Page 8

DROUGHTS AND FLOODS

HOW extraordinary in their vagaries are the climatic conditions of the great Island Continent! For months at a time in some portions of Australia there is no rain at all, and stock die by the thousand while the settlers suffer the greatest hardships. Torrential downpours are peculiarly familiar to the great river districts of Australia, north of Sydney, on the coast of New South Wales, where serious floods, attended by loss of life, are now being experienced. At Grafton, a fine town which is the centre of a rich dairying district, the water has invaded the streets, which resemble canals, and the residents are experiencing a lively time, those who are not actually marooned being frantically busy trying to salvage their belongings. To make things worse, the electricity supply is threatened, and the town is expected to be plunged into darkness, while the weather prophets predict more rain and much flood water has yet to come down from the upper reaches of the Clarence River, which at Grafton is over a mile wide. In the Grafton Valley more than a hundred families have been driven from their homes to seek a refuge on higher land. Conditions of a similar kind are being experienced on the Tweed, Hunter, Patterson, Williams and Hawkesbury Rivers, while even out in “the dry and arid West,” a man has been drowned in attempting to swim the Lachlan, which in dry seasons is merely a series of waterholes. In Queensland, also, the great rivers are in flood. This makes strange reading for Aucklanders, w T ho have not experienced rain for a period of months, who, perforce, see their beloved gardens perish for lack of moisture, and who moodily contemplate depleted supplies of water for domestic use owing to an outrageously insufficient storage scheme. Climatic, conditions are “on the upset” here, too, and there are those among our own • weather prophets who give warning of floods when the drought shall break. It is highly probable, and we would do well to guard against a surprise visitation.