DROUGHT ITEMS.

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 710, 5 January 1903, Page 1

DROUGHT ITEMS.

A positively majestic sight was the dustbank driven ahead of the monsoon rains that brought hope to the out-back in the first days of December. In the distance it hung like a curtain hundreds of feet high, apparently motionless; then it moved on slowly from the west, rising until it had blotted out the sun, turning and twisting and rolling, in all shades of brown and on to the deepest purple; then as it overtook one, for a few minutes—five, perhaps—dense darkness, passing to the yellow of a flame; then the yellow died out and the gloom was whiteybrown ; and finally the rain-drops, driven on a raging wind, fought with the dust, and sometimes won and sometimes lost. As usual the monsoon rains which fell out-back at the beginning of December spent themselves in patches. One station was flooded; its neighbor had to hide itself

from the fury of an appalling duststorm. The coaches that crawled into Broken Hill from the North were heavy with mud, and floods had made them a day late; the coaches that crawled in from the south were heavy with dust, and had travelled a track cursed with a 40-mile dry-stage. One station at least has some paddocks which were turned into bogs, and others which remained dust-heaps. Junee (N.S.W.) residents were shocked the other day, when a train pulled up there, to see a truck-load of sheep eating the wool off each other's backs. One was particularly ravenous and had completely plucked the wool from its - neighbor’s shoulder. Sympathetic witnesses hurriedly collected bushes and threw them in before

the train went on. Esley River cattle station, Northern Territory, was sold last month (just before the big rains) to a Westralian at the rate of 20s per head, or about £4OOO cash. The highest bid for the property at auction in Melbourne was 16s per head, notwithstanding all the cattle were fat. The drawback was evidently the vast stretch of droughty country between that district and the big markets.