NEVER-NEVER TRAGEDIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 205, 27 February 1912, Page 4

NEVER-NEVER TRAGEDIES.

Two pathetic items from Australia that have reached us lately serve to show that, by fcomparison, back-country life in New Zealand 1 is child's play to life in the back country -of. Australia. We hear first of a woman with her two children being lost in the bush, and of two out of the three perishing with thirst. ' Later we are told that two men seeking work in the interior of 'Westralia died of thirst. Such tragedies are impossible in. this well-watered land, and one of the commonest objects of Australia—the canvas water-bag—is almost unknown in this country. lii summertime, in the interior, a man may easily lose 'his reason-in ha'lf a day if he has nothing to drink, and it is therefore very necessary to.carry the water-bag. No one who has never travelled in the blighting heat. of the. Australian summer can pcssibly understand how precious a thing water is, and the bushmamwho returns to town and taps will rush to prevent water running to waste out of sheer "habit, - He knows .'tHat water is precious above everything else on earth. Over numberless miles of scorched plain in Australia, the traveller depends entirely on wayside, water-holes. He may know of their location, but he has to take his chance of finding them absolutely dry. In such ca'sgs he is usually ,found dead,' crow-eaten, and a moving mass of anta. There are times when the Australian bushman eagerly drinks foetid water in which weakened cattle have been hogged and have died. Many a man "looking for work" has boiled water thick with maggots to help down his meal of "johnny-cake" or damper. Hundreds of settlers on the great dry plains have sunk down on their knees in thankfulness at the long delayed rains. Many Australian children have lived to be four or five years-old before being caught in a shower of rain, and. nobody worries about umbrellas on such occasions. In parts of Australia the live stock subsist on the smallest ration of water, for hundreds of settlers have no water-supply and have to cart, often many miles. The comfortable townsman who allows his garden hose to play on his lawn all night rarely stops to think that every spot of the wasted water would be worth a king's ransom to the man with the empty water-bag. There are some people, eyen, living in towns .wild affect to despise water, ,and we have heard men declaring that they never drink it. The simple fact that about ninety-eight per cent, of all drinkables is water ihight convince them of the seriousness of a drought. ' Many men remember the early gold rushes in Westralia, where it was a crime to wash oneself and an impossibility to wash a shirt. It may offend the well-watered person to describe the bushman's method of washing his face when water is very precious. He takes a mouthful from his pannikin, spits it into his hands and rubs his face. The sun is his towel, j No one is in the vicinity deems it unusual, and most people would consider it a waste. To the man who has seen a starving person at last reach water, it will create no surprise to be told that he is madder at that moment than before, and is in danger of drowning if the water is deep enough. Happily these thirst tragedies are unknown in New Zealand, but it is good to remind favoted people sometimes that their brothers are not quite so well off, and that it is a real crime to waste water, even when there is a surfeit.