Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE ARTESIAN WELLS OF AUSTRALIA. 315 party which reached the southern magnetic Conflicting Theories. pole. Geologists are generally- agreed that the main basin is imperfect, but they are divided as to whether the leakage takes place only into MAXWELTON NO. 1 BORE. Depth, 1,474 feet. Output, 1,000,000 gallons per day. the Gulf of Carpentaria, or towards the south- west into the Great Australian Bight as well. Professor Gregory, in a recently published work entitled The Dead Heart of Australia, says : “ The only available outlet is northward over a rock barrier into the Gulf of Carpentaria, or possibly eastward into the South Pacific. The fact that the main artesian basin has no regu- lar outlet, and is enclosed by a rim complete on the west and south, and lias only a narrow shallow lip to the north, and perhaps another to the east, shows that the deep central waters are old accumulations. The wells are th© modern artificial outlets from a vast reservoir which is almost entirely enclosed,and the waters discharged from it must have been collected during the course of centuries, and probably of past millenniums. Nature has stored up a vast but probably a limited supply in a safe underground reservoir. That water, if pru- dently used, would probably last till Central Australia were so well occupied that it could afford to provide a more costly supply.” This theory of a supply more or less stag- nant until released by bores is called a hydrostatic one, while the existence of such extensive leakage as to cause , p Good Water. movement of the water is the characteristic of what is termed a hydraulic basin. The scientific investigators of the frame of the earth, in common with those who are concerned with that of the human body, are apt to disagree ; so we find Mr. Pittman— already mentioned—saying, in reference to this artesian area: “ Any accumulation of water, whether underground or on the surface, must eventually become salt, unless it has an out-