WATER FOR THIRSTY LANDS
No other continent has as much dry land or as little rainfall as
Australia. It has a great dry heart enclosed in green. More than two
thirds of the country has less than twenty inches of rain a year, or
about one third of the annual rainfall of New Orleans, and less than
half the average for Boston or Washington. You may have heard of Yuma,
Arizona, as one of the hottest, driest spots in the United States. In
twelve months it gets less than ten inches of rain. Two fifths of all
Australia is just as dry.
Australia is the hottest country on record. I have ridden for miles
astride the Equator in Africa, and have visited the arid wastes of
South America and Asia, but I have never found heat to compare with
this. Out in the country in the dry times one feels he is walking on a
tin roof over the lower regions, and the people facetiously say that
they have to feed their hens cracked ice to keep them from laying
boiled eggs. And yet sunstroke is quite rare in Australia.
[Illustration: Irrigation promises to transform parts of Australia into
orchards like those of our Northwest. Her fruits and farm products are
already popular in European markets, where the opposite seasons work to
her advantage.]
[Illustration: Square miles of pasturage have been destroyed and many
squatters made bankrupt by rabbits. The larger stations employ men
solely to hunt and trap rabbits. A single hunter may kill four hundred
a day.]
[Illustration: In a year Australia exports 20,000,000 frozen rabbits an
$18,000,000 worth of skins for making felt hats and women’s furs. Thus
she makes the pest pay some of the cost of fighting him.]
Along the eastern side of the continent, from twenty-five to one
hundred and fifty miles back from the Pacific Coast, is the Dividing
Range. These mountains separate the fertile and well-watered coast
regions from the drainage basin whose waters flow westward. They also
rob moisture-laden winds from the Pacific of much of their burden
of water. West of the mountains vast plateaus begin and extend for
two thousand miles, broken here and there by barren hills and rocky
peaks. These plains lie close to or within the tropics, and all day
long absorb heat which they give off by radiation at night. Ordinarily
this would have the effect of drawing in a supply of moisture from
the ocean, but on the Australian continent the heated interior is so
immense that not enough moist air comes in to water it.
The few rivers of the country are short and mostly unnavigable. There
is, in fact, only one big river system, the Murray-Darling. From its
source in the Australian Alps the Murray flows between the states of
New South Wales and Victoria, then crosses the southeastern corner of
South Australia. It is navigable for small steamers to a distance of
twelve hundred miles or more from its mouth. Of its tributaries the
most important are the Darling, which crosses New South Wales to join
it in the southwestern part of the state, and the Murrumbidgee. The
whole system waters a big basin on the eastern side of the continent in
which are some of the best sheep farms of Australia.
If you have looked at the map, you have noticed that even if Australia
has but few rivers, there are a number of large lakes, especially in
South Australia. But these bodies of water help matters little, for
most of them are salt, and there are no fresh-water lakes to speak of
on the whole continent. All the salt lakes are surrounded by flats of
treacherous mud encrusted with salt. In dry years the lakes shrink;
then a wet season fills them and the grass springs up all about them.
Australia is not only a land of scanty rainfall, few rivers, and great
heat. It is also a land of droughts. A district that has rejoiced in
sufficient rain for one or two years and piled up wealth from its crops
and its flocks may have to face a year or more of dryness that shrivels
up the face of the earth. One need not go far in Australia to hear
of the horrors of drought. Stockmen on their stations far off in the
interior sometimes go crazy because the rain fails to come, and many
have lost fortunes on account of dry weather. In such times, even a man
with thousands of acres and tens of thousands of sheep may have to sit
helpless and watch the animals die before his eyes.
The droughts clear the land of everything green. The pastures become
as bare as the roads, and the sheep stagger about, nosing in the dust
for the seeds of grasses and trees. Sometimes trees are cut down to
give them food. During one drought a sheep-raiser who had four thousand
acres of land kept one hundred men busy cutting off the branches of
his apple and other trees to feed the flocks. The sheep ate the leaves
and even the twigs. This same man had another gang skinning dead sheep
as fast as they died, and a third whose business it was to lift up
the exhausted animals when they fell. This was to keep them from the
carrion crows hovering about over them ready to peck out their eyes.
During these droughts one may see the bodies of kangaroos lying here
and there upon the plains. Thousands of rabbits die, and I have been
told that even the birds drop dead from the trees and that their bodies
line both sides of the fences.
At intervals the whole continent suffers from terrible dryness. Every
state except Tasmania has its drought history. The Riverina country of
New South Wales is one of the best of the sheep-raising districts. It
produces some of the finest wool and is noted for its excellent grass,
yet in times of severe drought it looks as though a fire had swept over
it. Most of it is then as bare as a baseball diamond. There is not a
green sprout or any sign of vegetable life to be seen. In one drought
prevailing in parts of Queensland there were tracts strewn with dead
sheep, cattle, and horses, and in some districts more than half the
sheep were lost. At another time the wool clip of Australia was reduced
almost twelve per cent. and the number of lambs born was cut down
enormously.
Ten of the thirteen big droughts recorded since 1880 affected
principally interior regions where the rainfall is normally less then
twenty-five inches; but almost the whole continent suffered in the
great drought of 1902-1903. Imagine what it would be like if all the
United States from New York to San Francisco had no rain, and there was
no green except on the mountains and in parts of New England. Then you
will have some idea of conditions in Australia during this visitation.
The great drought was the culmination of five unfavourable seasons.
Fifteen million sheep and one and a half million cattle died in a
single year, while in the whole period sixty million sheep and four
million cattle perished of thirst and starvation. Wheat production fell
off to less than one third of the normal. For lack of water mining
operations were checked. Many people left the country, the birth rate
decreased, and the death rate rose.
There was another general drought in 1919-1920, which was severe but
not so bad as the one of 1902. Besides, by that time the people had
learned more about irrigation and storing up fodder for grassless
winters.
The first irrigation enterprise in the country was undertaken by
two brothers named Chaffey, who had had experience in dry farming
in California. They secured from the government of Victoria a big
grant of land, which was then described as a “howling wilderness of
spinnifex and mallee scrub,” and irrigated it from the Murray River.
It has been little more than a generation since then. Where once was
that wilderness there are now twelve thousand acres of irrigated land
supporting a population of six thousand people.
Other areas in northern Victoria, where streams are not available and
artesian water is unfit for household and stock use, are irrigated by
what is called the Wimmera-Mallee system. The state government has
built storage basins in the mountains of the Wimmera River region from
which small surface ditches are run down the slopes, sometimes for a
distance of two hundred miles. By excavating basins and throwing dams
across natural depressions, three reservoirs have been built holding
fifty billion cubic yards of water. These tanks are filled once or
twice a year. In some cases the government permits a limited use of
this water for irrigation, but generally most of it goes to supply live
stock and households. Victoria rents water at an unusually low price,
the rate being from one dollar and twenty cents to one dollar and
forty-four cents an acre foot.
Three fourths of the irrigated lands of Australia lie along the Murray
and its tributaries, and the most important of the irrigation projects
is a scheme for impounding the waters of this river. Backed by the
Commonwealth treasury, the state governments of New South Wales,
Victoria, and South Australia share the expense. Just below Albury on
the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria they are building a
dam to store one million acre feet of water, and another of half a
million acre feet. In South Australia another reservoir will hold five
hundred thousand acre feet. It is estimated that when completed these
reservoirs will irrigate twelve million acres of land, or an area more
than twice the size of the whole state of New Jersey.
[Illustration: Mildura is the centre of a fine fruit district, which a
generation ago was a wilderness given over to rabbits. The success of
this irrigation project started Australia on her policy of reclaiming
arid lands.]
[Illustration: Victoria is fast clearing the scrub once infesting more
than one fourth of the state. After the growth is levelled and dried,
it is burned off, cultivated with stump-jump ploughs, and sown in
wheat.]
[Illustration: Cattle are often saved by driving them from a drought
area to a region where pasturage is available. The government maintains
stock routes so laid out as to take in all possible water holes and
streams.]
[Illustration: In parts of Australia much of the rainfall of a year may
come in one violent downpour. The rainwater is caught in basins, or
“tanks,” dug in depressions and lined with cement.]
Victoria has, besides, some twenty irrigation projects of her own,
the most important being the one in the Goulburn Valley, which serves
nearly nine hundred thousand acres, or an area greater than that of
the state of Rhode Island. New South Wales’s principal scheme is the
Murrumbidgee River project, which, when completed, will water two
hundred thousand acres.
For the Murrumbidgee scheme the government first bought a tract
of about three hundred and fifty thousand acres. Then it started
construction of the Burrinjuck Reservoir, a lake forty-one miles long
formed by damming the river. The state surveyed the land, fixed routes
for highways and the railroad, put in a tree nursery, established an
experimental farm, made brick for houses, cut up the land into farm
blocks, and got a planning expert from America to lay out the smaller
towns and the two future cities of Leeton and Griffin. After twenty
million dollars had been spent in this preparatory work the land was
opened to settlers.
Leeton and Griffin are now model cities. Each has a civic centre,
broad straight streets for business, and pretty winding streets for
residences, with a playground for children in every block. The factory
districts are segregated and have railroad sidings so that transfers of
freight may be easily effected. Butter, cheese, and bacon factories and
fruit canneries have been erected and have done well.
It was a bright day in Australia’s farming history when its supply
of underground water was discovered. Its Great Artesian Basin is the
largest known. It is bigger than the state of Texas, taking in a large
part of Queensland, ninety thousand square miles of South Australia,
almost as much of New South Wales, and twenty thousand square miles
of the Northern Territory. In this vast area there is little or no
surface water, but under it lie lakes and streams, which supply many
gushing wells. Two of Queensland’s wells flow two million gallons of
water every day, while sixteen of them have a daily outflow of more
than one and a half million gallons. Some are very deep. The well at
Winton was sunk four thousand feet before water was struck, and in many
the water has come from a depth of more than half a mile. In New South
Wales a large number of bores have been drilled, and in South Australia
artesian wells are multiplying rapidly.
The water from the deep wells is often hot enough to scald a dog to
death. It is slightly salt and contains some soda, but generally the
sheep thrive upon it. In some cases, however, it is too full of mineral
matter for the stock and can be used only for irrigation.
The water from the wells is run to the pastures in pipes and ditches.
The ditches are made with huge ploughs constructed of logs in the form
of a V, the end shod with iron. A team of eight or ten oxen drags the
plough along the course desired for the stream. This makes a broad
furrow, forming a canal at which the stock can drink. There are many
canals of this kind from fifteen to twenty miles long. One of the best
features about artesian water is the fact that droughts do not affect
the supply.
In some of the dry areas where there are no streams for irrigation
and where artesian water is not to be had or is not usable for either
stock or irrigation, catchment basins and reservoirs have been built to
conserve rain water. Sometimes these are dug down below the surface of
the ground and roofed over to prevent loss by evaporation. In places
skeleton buildings with large roof areas are set up to catch the rain.
Moreover, the Australians are learning the lessons of dry farming
and of laying up supplies against unfavourable seasons. Many of the
stockmen, especially those with small holdings, pack away grass in
pits dug in the ground. Salt is mixed in with the fodder to prevent
its fermentation and the whole mass is covered with earth to exclude
the air. Treated in this way, the food will keep for years, and insure
against loss of stock by starvation in a dry season. Nevertheless, the
settler is not safe in starting to raise sheep or cattle unless he has
enough capital to tide him over the lean years that are sure to come.
As a rule, the dry spells affect different parts of the country at
different times. Hence the stock can be saved by being driven from
stricken areas to places where the pasturage is good. The dreaded
droughts as well as the need of feeders to the railroads account for
the stock routes that form a network over the whole country.
In Australia, as in all countries, the cattle regions are in wide,
unsettled areas. The cattleman has his herds “’way out back” in the
“Never-Never Land” where they roam over unfenced tracts of vast extent.
In the Northern Territory the average pastoral holding is two hundred
and seventy-five thousand acres. The great events of the year are the
“musters” of the “mobs” of cattle, when the stock is counted, sorted,
branded, and selected for marketing. Sometimes the trip to the nearest
port or railroad will take as long as five months. The law demands that
the cattle roads be kept open and that the stock be allowed to feed on
a half-mile stretch on each side of the route as they pass along. It
also requires that the cattle move at least six miles a day.
In poor seasons, when water and forage are particularly scarce,
hundreds of cattle may die of thirst or starvation on the way.
Therefore the stock routes are laid out by the governments to take
advantage of every known source of water. Streams, springs, water
holes, and stagnant pools are marked out, for in the arid regions the
stock will drink about any liquid they can get. Wells are dug and
tanks for catching what rain may fall are constructed. New South Wales
has seven hundred of these public watering places, which are under
government supervision. South Australia’s stock routes extend from Port
Augusta to the borders of Queensland and Western Australia, and up into
the northwest desert for seven hundred miles. Western Australia looks
after two thousand miles of stock routes leading from inland stations
to the cities on the southwest coast.
[Illustration: No Australian would think of going through a day
without tea. Cattle men, sheep herders, bullock drivers, and even the
“sundowner” carry it with them and “boil the billy” over camp fires.]
[Illustration: Unlike its rival, Sydney, Melbourne grew according to
plan. Collins Street, the main thoroughfare, and the other principal
streets were laid out a mile long, 99 feet wide, and in checker-board
patterns.]
One of the most marvellous things about Australia is her quick recovery
from a drought. Within a week after a rain plains that have been
reduced to dust, without a vestige of any growth for miles and miles,
are covered with green and in a short time furnish luxuriant pasturage.
The drought never kills the seeds of native grasses in the ground.
Three years after the drought of 1902, New South Wales, which had lost
seventeen million sheep, had increased her flocks from twenty-three
million head to forty million and the number of her cattle and horses
had doubled. By 1905 the number of sheep and cattle in the whole
Commonwealth exceeded the figures for 1900.
The Australians cannot be beaten for enthusiastic faith in their
country, and some of them go so far as to tell me that droughts are
a good thing. They say the soil must rest occasionally and that dry
seasons, like ice and snow in cold countries, are simply Nature’s
methods of forcing the lands to lie fallow.