Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE ARTESIAN WELLS OF AUSTRALIA. BY C. O. BURGE, M.Inst.C.E. The severe droughts by which many parts of Australia are afflicted periodic- ally have proved extremely disastrous to the owners of large sheep and cattle runs. The risks arising from these droughts have, however, been much reduced by the sinking of a huge number of extraordinarily productive Artesian Wells, to a description of which this article is devoted. A WELL-SINKING OUTFIT. ing horses from the surrounding country. Not- withstanding the intense brilliance of the re- morseless sun, the great gloom of the shadow of death hung over the whole scene, gaunt greyhound - like An Australian k j • j j k • Drought. sheep, dying or dead, being scattered at intervals around, interspersed with countless rabbits killed by eating the bark of the stunted and leafless shrubs. Away on the horizon lay the tremulous and luminous mir- age, mocking with its cool and silvery sur- face reflecting the rocks which seemed to rise above it, and fading almost imperceptibly away on our approach. It was among such disheartening scenes as this that, some thirty years ago, at the Kajlara sheep station between Bourke and Wilcannia, in the far west of New South Wales, a small, keenly-anxious group of scientists and pastor- alists watched the sinking of the first artesian bore in Aus- The first Artesian Bore in Australia. MANY years ago the writer traversed the parched western plains of Aus- tralia in the time of drought. In the vast yellowish-brown expanses there was nothing but the old wheel ruts, hard as iron, to distinguish the course followed by the pant- tralia. The scientists were supremely confi- dent, taught by previous, almost unerring, in- ferences from geological research ; most of the others were doubtful, evincing that suspicion of the man of calculation and theory which is found so often among so-called practical men. Slowly, with the rough appliances of