exceptional causes of the dryness and purity of the Australian air. Some ascribe it to the effect of a depressed and
generally dry interior, others to the insular position, the
great Southern Ocean, and the unimpeded courses of the
trade-winds. Many causes, no doubt, concur.
The amount of rainfall is not inconsiderable on the east coast and in the cordillera. In Sydney the average is twice as much as in London. In Melbourne it equals that in London.
But at uncertain periods drought afflicts the land. The streams disappear on their slow course to the interior; the herbage is burnt to a colour browner than stubble. Where cattle and sheep depend for water only on what they find at a natural stream or pool even the dry stalks disappear in the neighbourhood. The weaker animals cannot travel to the food, becoming more distant daily by trampling and consumption; they sink in the mud at the head of the diminishing water, and are too weak to struggle out of it. They die, and their unburied corpses taint the air. One great accession to the pasturing capacity of Australia was brought about by dividing "runs,[1] with fences, and (by damming up watercourses or sinking wells) shortening the distance which live stock traversed to obtain water.[2]
When the country is parched by drought, the setting in of a hot wind dismays the inhabitants. Meteorologists are still making and comparing observations to account for the violence of this phenomenon. To the sea-coast on the Hunter, at Sydney, at South Australia, and yet more intensely, by contrast with the average temperature, at Victoria, the hot winds sweep with a blast like that of a furnace. A person suddenly leaving a substantially built, and therefore a cool house, can hardly believe that the scorching blast which salutes him is not caused by a
- ↑ A run is the general term for the tract of country on which Australians keep their stock, or allow them to "run."
- ↑ Since the first edition of this work was published in 1883, a great change has been wrought in Queensland, South Australia, and New South Wales by boring artesian wells, in many of which the supply of water seems exhaustless. It is to be hoped that it may prove so, for by means of these wells enormous regions where there is much grass, otherwise unavailable, are turned to use. The New South Wales statistician mentions one well as yielding five millions of gallons daily.
