UNKNOWN AUSTRALIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 August 1921, Page 3

UNKNOWN AUSTRALIA.

REMOTE PARTS VISITED. PROFESSOR’S INVESTIGATION. Sydney, August 10. Having just completed a hasty investigation of pertain geological formations in remote parts of Central Australia, Professor Sir Edgeworth David, of Antarctic fame, has returned to Sydney deeply impressed with the vast artesian water, mineral, and possibly oil .resources that merely await development. Incidentally the party which he led came across evidences of glacial action near Yellow Creek—now a most torrid locality—which he declares that the word “stupendous” is insufficient to describe, and which will constitute that locality a happy hunting ground for geologists for all time. Nothing so remarkable of this nature, he says, was found by him or his col league. Sir Douglas Mawson, in the Antarctic. But it is in regard to the resources above referred to that Sir Edgeworth is most emphatic, and he is moving the Australasian Science Association to negotiate with the Federal Government to undertake immediately a com-

prehenaive geological survey along all the possible routes of the projected north-south railway which will traverse the entire continent. A Federal Committee is now taking evidence of regarding this great project. To emphasise the value of the possibilities of such a survey, Sir Edgeworth David cites the Federal geological iuir- 1 vey of America, which, he says, has been performing work of great value for over 50 years, not only in co-ordinating the work of the various State geological surveys, but in taking up such matters of general scientific and economic importance as the structure and origin of the arteeian water basins, the great oilfields, and the ore deposits of copper, iron, etc., of North America. “It is obvious,” declares Sir Edgeworth David, “that from the strategic standpoint not a day should be lost, in view of the colossal war preparations in the Far East, in constructing a line either from Oodnadatta to Pine Creek—the present southern terminus from Darwin—or from Clonhurry, in Queensland, to Darwin. Both lines should surely be constructed sooner or later. While this

extreme strategic urgency exists, a Fed* oral Parliamentary Committee is en* quiring into the condition for making a railway from Oodnadatta to Pine Creek. At the same time it is certainly the case that next to nothing, from the geological point of view as regards the question of water supply and mineral resources, ia known about the vast area which either of these lines would traverse, and the inquiry by the Federal Parliamentary Committee should certainly be supplemented by a reliable geological report.” It is practically certain that the Federal Government Bureau of Science and Industry will move in the matter.