SEARCHING FOR OIL

Taranaki Daily News, 1 May 1920, Page 5

SEARCHING FOR OIL

QUEST IN AUSTRALIA. FUEL NEEDED FOR MOTORS. SYSTEMATIC INVESTIGATION. Sydney, April 20. There is a search proceeding to-day in every likely part of the tvide territory of Australia and her dependencies. It has been going on for the past three or four veai's, and although it cannot be said to he 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 tho motor traction which, it. is believed, will enormously speed up the adequate development of this country. The problem of how to overcome distance is more truly a national problem of Australia than of any other land. The wide areas of the interior, thougii shown 011 the maps as desert, are cap able of .sustaining pastoral industry—not the comfortable one-sheep-to-t lie-acre farming of New Zealand, perhaps, but a stockraising business in which the animals are given a wide stretch of country to roam over. Here and there, sandwiched between the dry regions, are fertile, wellwatered slices of territory, where grass grows abundantly, such as the great Barclay tablelands, lying south of the Gulf of Carpenteria—and which would cany 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 tip limited areas in the far interior, was not a good linancial proposition before the war, and now it has made such projects diflienlt to consider. Yet. the country cannot he developed without cheap and rapid transit, and the problem. it is now believed, will be solved by the motor-lorry and the aeroplane. Kaeli State has its own little public works policy; but some day soon it is hoped to got them nil together at a conference, when a common policy for the development of main arterial roadsj will be adopted. Motor-iorries already supplementing the overloaded railways in places, and (jiiite successfully so far a? cheap carriage and prompt delivery go, hut they are now greatly handicapped by very bad roads—good stretches alternating with parts well nigh impassable—by inability to obtain sufficient motor-lorries and bv the high price and limited quantity of motor spirit.