The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1911. A GIGANTIC UNDERTAKING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 323, 9 June 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1911. A GIGANTIC UNDERTAKING.

It may not occur to the average reader that tlie modem engineer is incomparably a more important person than a Cabinet Minister or a great dignitary Or an eminent sailor. But it will occur to tlie reader that the men who make the world smaller for us, and increase its possibilities enormously, are least heard of. We may, for instance, know that the great pyramid was erected by a king as an imperishable monument to himself, but while the king is remembered the genius who contrived the marvel has heen forgotten for centuries. Like most {.'real engineers, he did not advertise; he merely worked out gigantic schemes for the changing of a country. The leading spirit, the engineer, does not rush into print or on to the platform to tell people what a great man he is. It is much more likely that a stray politician will claim all the credit by talking about it. In fact, mediocrity is most frequently advertised by the mediocre. A small cablegram from Sydney has told us that tlie irrigation scheme now in course of construction to transform a portion of the Commonwealth will water 550,000 acres, and will be capable of supporting 200.000 people. That is to say, engineering genius will effect for Australia, n complete transformation of part of its territory. In order to show the faith, energy and enterprise that Australia can and will put into progressive works, it is necessary to say that the country to be watered is two hundred miles distant from the Barren jack dam. An enthusiastic writer, understanding the gigantic nature of the enterprise, brings the scheme within the grasp of the layman by saying that the inland sea which will eon-ewe the water will be twice the size of Sydney harbor. The State knew that the Biverina country, if adequately watered, would be amazingly fertile, and so it set about making a sea of water inland that will be twenty miles in extent, and which will contain two hundred and thirty thousand million gallons of water. The far-seeing eyes of tlie engineers observed an immense area that could be made into a gigantic lake, if the Murrunibidgee could be dammed. Their business was to dam it. They selected ii portion of the river at its narrowest point, diverted tlie stream, and set about the dam. Twelve hundred people lire engaged on the work, the nearest point of which is twenty-five miles from the railwav. And so a railway was built, for it would have been impossible to get

i.ven the fifty thousand tons of cement required without il is means. The cutting done to make this railway was almost unprecedented in Australia, and even then the two feet gauge track cost only £IOOO a mile to lay. The Common- \ wealth Public Works Department did the preliminary work of preparing the river for the contractors (Messrs. Lane and Peters), and then let the contract for £-217,7(10. As the cable infers, the great wall is growing speedily. Next month storage of water can be commenced, and it is therefore supposed that at least 1 110 feet of this dam wall will have then been completed. At least, another 165 feet has to be built on to the wall before it is complete. What man must do to control the forces of nature is understood when it is stated that the thickness of the wall is 188 feet. An official extract shows the method being employed, '-.in area of about 1080 square feet, cruciform in shape, is timbered. The blocks of Cyclopean concrete constructed on these areas are termed units, and are so arranged that eacii shall break joint both horizontally and vertically with those immediately surrounding it. By this method of construction it lias been found possible to get in about 33 per cent, of large stones." The builders embed stones up to a weight of fifteen tons each in concrete, and, by machine-mixing—all the plant is driven by electricity—about fifteen hundred cubic yards of wall arc growing in the Murrumbidgce river every week. The work will be completed in •bout two years, although the benefit of irrigation of part of the area mentioned will be available during the coming summer. We believe that Australia owes the initiation of its irrigation policy to the stranger, for there were no extensive schemes in Australia before the appearance of the American engineers, ( Chaffcy Brothers, who were responsible i for the irrigation colonies of Mildura and Renmark. Since the success of these fruit-growing colonies (for Mildura produces the finest dried fruits on earth) many other schemes have resulted, and have literally turned the desert into a garden. Australia at one time looked upon artesian boring as a possible way out of the difficulty in drought-smitten areas, but artesian water has been proved to rob the soil of a vital constituent, and until science finds a remedy—and it is allied that science is meeting with success—irrigation' tov artesian supply is practically useless. It is likely, therefore, that Australia will gflH further control its great snow-fetj rivers, for wherever this hag been (tone there liavS sprung up prosperous nnd happy conj-' munities. The Barrenjack Storage and Murrumbidgee Irrigation Scheme "is, of 'otirse, u.J most ambitious yet undertaken, but it'is proba-My merely the forerunner of the Jamming of. Such riVers as the Darling, the Murray: the Lachiaii. and other fine waterways that are so often uncontrolled l and spread across tile country for mile after mile. The giallt Murray, for instance, has been krio\vn to crawl out of its bed during flood time, and to spread for forty miles on each side of ills natural channels The Darling, equally given to vagaries, may either reach for miles across the plains or dwindle down to a Were string of water-holes in flfbiight time. Man, in undertaking the control 'of great waterways, is at his finest. The modest engineer geniuses, Svho quietly work out their plans for peaceful revolution, are a class worthy of the deepest admiration of their fellows. The brain that is capable of giving to a country a scheme that will benefit 200,000 people is valuable above all ordinary commercial calculations. It is to such brains that the earth owes its progress.