SECRETS OF A DESERT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 449, 30 January 1948, Page 19

SECRETS OF A DESERT

CROSSING THE DEAD HEART. By C, T. Madigan. Georgian House, Melbourne. WAS half-way through this absorbing book-the story of the first crossing of the Simpson Desert north of Lake Eyre i: Central Australia-before I noticed on the dust jacket that the author "did not live to see it published." After that my interest was as great but my enjoyment was clouded. For it is one of those rare books which are at once science and the revelation of a person, You feel in a chapter or two that you know the author, not merely know him but like him, and find yourself hoping when you write that letter to him that never gets posted that he will like you too. That is what was happening to me when I laid the book down for a moment; and when I took it up again the flap of the dust jacket straightened out and gave me the sudden jar with which we hear of the death of men.we have thought full of vitality and interest in life. I have not heard yet why Dr. Madigan died, but Who’s Who says that he served and was twice wounded in France between 1915 and 1918, and if I had known that he had been with exploration parties to the Antarctic and across African deserts before he started on his Central Australia journeys, I might have been-less surprised at his end. But I would not have -been less grieved. His conquest of the "Dead Heart" was not one of the sensational victories of exploration, but it was 4 perfect example of victory on a modest scale, achieved by intelligence and good sense. The key to the problem was the use of camels; and after that wise decision, a small party and unhurried preparations. The desert had long been skirted on both flanks. Drovers and other adventurers had cut across corners of it. But no one had crossed it on the ground from east to west or west to east, surmounted its hundreds of sand ridges, mapped its surface, or brought back the true story, if there was one, of its plant and animal life. Now we know most of it. We know that the outstanding features of the desert are sand, spinifex, and lizards, in that order, and that those who expect to see any of that land

irrigated and settled, or the abandoned stations on its fringe made safe for settlement by anybody who is not a near-millionaire, are just wishful but ignorant thinkers. Dr. Madigan discusses most of the schemes brought forward from time to time for converting the dead heart of Australia into a living paradise, but refuses to take any of them seriously. "Dreams of increasing the rainfall by impounding water or of making the arid Interior a Garden of Eden by irrigation are nothing but castles in the air, ‘with no more substance than Lasseter’s Reef, another myth that is kept alive only by the glamour of mystery and inaccessibility."

Sundowner