HOUSEKEEPING IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIA.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20257, 28 July 1937, Page 3

HOUSEKEEPING IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIA.

FOOD AND VEGETABLES A PROBLEM. A letter recently received from Alice Springs, Central Australia, gives a vivid picture of life there, says the Countrywoman. Our correspondent writes: “This is a very pretty place, almost entirely surrounded by mountains. Our only means of communication with the outside world, apart from the telegraph line and an occasional aeroplane, is the weekly train, which steams through the Gap (unless it is flooded) on a Saturday and returns leaving us to our solitude on a Tuesday morning. We get our rains in the summer, when railway bridges are swept away and the train takes, as it did last month, nine days bo do the three days’ journey. “ Most of the people (the whites number about a couple of hundred), are very nice. There are a good number of blacks and half castes and a few Afghans and Chinese. “ We have a galvanised iron house, which began life as a shed. However it has been added to and improved, so that no one would dream of its origin. It is a fair-sized 'house for up here and consists of three rooms, a bathroom and wide verandahs. It has ten doors, so you can imagine the rush to shut them all when a dust storm comes up suddenly, as dust storms frequently do. “Food is a problem; fresh vegetables are hard to get. We have managed to grow spinach and marrows and we can buy carrots. In the winter we get vegetables from Adelaide, but as it is a week from the time they are packed until the time they reach us they are not fit for food in this heat. Everything else, except milk and meat has to come from Adelaide. The meat is cheap but poor, it is chiefly goat and beef. When thp floods prevent the trains from getting through there is often a food shortage, which is more severe as one gets further out, for the roads become impassable and the motor trucks get stuck in the mud all over the country.”