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Show Great Drouth Plagues Australia, Moab Park Official Reports Roger Contor,. assistant superintendent of Canyonlands National Park, is presently on temporary duty assisting the Australian government in park development in that country. Last week, at our request, he began a series of short articles arti-cles on his experiences in Australia. This week he deals with the great drouth in that country. His letter follows: .. .. Kosciusko Natl. Park April 5, 1968 Dear Sam: All talk in this part of Australia Aus-tralia has been dominated by the great drouth. Apparently this is the seventh year of the worst dry spell in history. The entire 31(1. miles from Sydney took us through a brown landscape land-scape with pastures nibbled to the roots. SheeD have been bringing 10 to 25 cents per head (not per pound) at the stockyards. Ranchers have been giving awav herds of several hundred because they can't sell them for enough to pay the trucking bill. In hopes that rains would come, many stockmen have utilized their last resources to keep their breeding stock intact. This vear they could scarcely do that. In the past months we have seen large old willow trees being cut down with chain saws and 'ouickly stripped of all bark 'by the hungry animals. Special Spec-ial bankruptcy privileges have been granted to; stockmen, enabling en-abling them to emerge free of obligations within a few months. This isn't, a new experience ex-perience in Australia. An old poem expresses a rancher's bitterness, ending with: ' Bandicoots and swarms of rats, . Bull-dog ants and native cats, - Stunted timber, . ' thirsty plains, - ' Parched up deserts, scanty rains. To stay 'in thee, O land of Mutton! I would not give a' single button, . But bid thee now a ' long farewell, ' , Thou scorching sunburnt ; land of Hell. . But last week the first' good rains fell since 18 months ago over two inches. You never saw 'a more grateful people of respondent landscape. Bright green grass has popped pop-ped up all over. The drouth may not be over. But the, old timers predict a wet year because be-cause "the kangaroos' have had more babies than usual" a sure sign the drouth has passed! . Roger - |