ACROSS AUSTRALIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1939, Page 4

ACROSS AUSTRALIA

TOUR BY NEW ZEALANDERS IN MOTORCAR IMPRESSIONS OF THE COUNTRY. OVER EIGHT THOUSAND MILES COVERED. Travel across Australia by car provided an interesting tour recently for two New Zealanders, one of whom, Mr Rob Selby, of Mangapapa, is wellknown in Masterton and. Pahiatua. On their arrival in Sydney the tourists purchased a car, which provided them with sleeping accommodation throughout the trip. All gear was carried on the outside of the car and food on the luggage carrier away from ants. Oil sheets were carried for covers, but as no rain was experienced these were not required. A camp oven, billies, a .303 rifle and a double-barrelled snov gun, a .22 Remington, field glasses and camera completed the outfit. The cai was sold again at the end of the tour, during which over 8,000 miles was covered, including bad bush-tracks, rocky and stony plains, sandy riverbeds, and exceedingly bad corrugated stretches of road on black soil plains. The car did 24 miles to the gallon ana the cost of petrol ranged from Is 8d in Sydney and Melbourne to 4s 2d at Newcastle Waters in the Northern Territory. They carried as much as gallons of petrol. Water was always available, about 100 miles being the longest dry stretch. The sandy riverbeds, in which the car got stuck a few times, were the worst obstacles. , the long stretches of easy going, where there were no railways and long runs with heavy loads at fair speeds were the order, it was surprising to see J“ e number of almost new lorry tyres discarded on the roadside through blowouts A garage man in Sydney advised the tourists to keep down the tyre inflation in the heat and they had no trouble whatever, but many people had apparently bought their experience dearly.

SOME DEPRESSING TOWNS. “Most of Australia is sorely in need of rain, South Australia being the only exception,” stated Mr Selby in a description of his tour. “Queensland s plain country (Longreach, Cloncuny, Camooweal, etc) is very dry. The soil is first-class, but the grass looks not only burnt up but absolutely killed by the drought. These towns look very depressing, with drab outback shacks and ?ne o? two streets of creditable shops. A feature of the towns in the north is the attendant herd of goats. Hundreds of them are about every town. They are used mostly for milk and where there are no sheep are used as mutton. We went up to- Burketown, Normanton and Karumba (a new seaplane base) on the Gulf of Carpentaria, and these places are worse than dismal. Eketahuna is a gay metropolis by comparison. I think Burketown has a white population of about 27, and Normanton 125. Darwin is quite nicely situated on an elevated peninsula overlooking a bay and has good buildings and a few trees and palms. I feel sure they will eventually make a nice place of it, though at present it is full of unemployed. We saw big planes and big seaplanes here . ■•ln • Darwin Harbour were a few pearl luggers, a Japanese mother ship, the much-in-the-news Larrikia, a little tub of an armed motor launch owned by the Australian Government which had been sent out to stop Japanese pearl poachers in Australian waters. It arrested two luggers and they were at anchor at Darvin, pending litigation. The Larrikea jroke down after the arrest was effected and had to be towed in by the captives ....

farms without fences. “From Darwin we came through the -entre of Australia to Adelaide. There are cattle stations without fences all along the route and a few sheep staions nearer Adelaide. Donkeys and •amels are used round Alice Springs for outback transport on account oi ;and. Alice Springs has wat^ r jailable close to the surface and almost avery backyard has a windmill • • • • Alice Springs is the railhead.. The rai .- comes from Adelaide and one train a week is the time-table, so its hard to imagine the necessity for a ’arge new hospital and goal, both of are just being completed. Alice Springs is a nice little place most residents growing a few trees and doing a lot of watering for a little lawn and warden It is really pleasant after doming in from the country to the north, where there is hardly a fence or 700 or 800 miles. A little mining for mid, chiefly at Tennant’s Creek, and 'attle grazing means that some transport is needed and Alice Springs is ihe depot.'

DUG-OUTS AS HOUSES. “South from Alice Springs was the toughest going. The road does not follow the railway but bears slightly she west past cattle stations. It was here that we met with the sand and 'he most barren country, which apoeared more barren than that in the north on account of our doubtful process. We called at the opal fields at Pedy but it is a dead industry here and only about forty hangers-on •emain. Coober Pedy .is like a subsidiary line in France. There are no buildmgs. All people live in comfortable dug-outs as there is no timber. Here too though things were generaHy barren the stock looked better and the few homesteads we saw seemed moie alive. It appears that for the last three years they have.had rains with attenarnt prosperity. Sheep are herded -.hepherded by blacks (for white own 2 rs of course) and they looked realb well There are no fences. Ihe cattle rarely stray for more than five or six miles from where they are boin the water supply (usually in troughs from windmills) being an aid to the h ° min ff instinct. Before hitting Adelaide we visited Iron Knob, which is across the Gulf from Adelaide. This is the nucleus or raw material source of the iron ore which keeps the Newcastle steel works going. . . .

COMMUNITY HOTELS. “North of Adelaide the country looked well. They have had rains. It is a “rain, mixed farming and fruit growing country. From Adelaide we went north-east along the Murray to Echuca and then down through Bendigo to Melbourne. Before getting to the Murray we were in the grape growing area for wines. . . . Some of the towns about here have community hotels run by a committee. The profits go to beautifying the hotel and surroundings and the towns themselves, a very commendable communistic move. The Murray itself is all dams, weirs and pumping stations and in the 'Renmark and Mildura areas the farms

are highly improved .... Easily the best oranges I’ve ever had were the South Australian navels .... Except where they irrigate the banks of the Murray are disappointingly barren but there are big irrigation works and dams and large water conservation areas in both Victoria and New South Wales and big jobs have been done at Waranga Reservoir, Goulbourn Weir, Eldon Weir and Hume Reservoir, all of which we had a look at and encountered most styles of farming and cropP Mr Selby goes on to refer to Bendigo and Melbourne. The big timber trees on the Dandenong- Ranges were rather impressive as they had not seen a decent tree since leaving the Queensland coast. Trees up to 300 ft high were seen on the Great Dividing Range. The Orient Cave at Jenolan was considered definitely better than Waitomo.

FINCHES BUILD IN HAWKS’ NESTS. Passing on to refer to wild life, Mr Selby states that they never hesitated to stop the car and investigate the birdlife, nests, lizards, snakes, goannas or trees and wild flowers. The birds and flowers were wonderful. “In investigating hawks’ nests,” he writes, “we found that a small finch (Zebra finch) builds its nest in the larger twigs of the hawks’ nests. Seven finch nests were found in one hawk’s nest, some of which contained young ready to fly and others just eggs. Apparently the hawks don’t molest the finches, as the young hawks were almost ready to fly. The finches lay about eight eggs to a nest, which is a lot compared with our smaller birds’ tally or three or four. We saw few snakes, as they were barely out of their winter torpor but one dead one on the road was at least 7it 3in long. We made a few trips along the Queensland and Northern Territory rivers and the water-fowl was amazing in size, variety and numbers. We saw between 140 and 150 native companions in one flock on a small lagoon and as these birds are up to sft tall and have a huge wing spread they almost darkened the sky as they came soaring overhead to settle close behind us They are very tame and we saw a few of them dancing, for which they are famous, hopping about, turning round in the air, throwing pieces of grass about and catching them, etc. We saw large mobs of Galahs (red and slate blue) and corellas (white and a little yellow). Both are parrots abom ‘en inches high and go about m flocks large enough to change the appearance of the trees when they settle on them. There were large flocks of budgerigais ■ 00 —all green—and they were wonderfully fast flyers. The huge variety of other birds, especially water-fowl, and highly-coloured members of the parrakeet family is impossible to describe. Water conservation for irrigation seems to have helped water-fowl in the south, too. We saw a couple of large crocodiles and managed to shoot one small one on the Flinders River . . . . Emus were not plentiful but were well distributed. Kangaroos, too, were well spread but only in one area did we see them in large numbers. I counted sixty but have no doubt there were many more in that mob. We saw some wonderfully large' kangaroos of red-grey and wallaroo (very dark) varieties. We saw no dingoes, foxes, oppossums or koalas but saw one extra large mob (thousands) of flying foxes in We passed through one large cattle station, Alexandra Downs, of 15,000 square miles, carrying 64,000 head of cattle, but we understand that there is a much larger one in the north-west corner of the Territory called Victoria River Downs.”