president's address. 25 



Tanks were fitted with pumps and watering troughs for travelling 

 stock; and were sublet by the Lands Department to contractors, 

 who took charge, and had a fixed scale of prices for supplying 

 travellers with water. 



Water was also sought for by sinking wells, but with few excep- 

 tions, in the dry country the supply of water obtained was scanty ; 

 and though sufficient for the homestead or passing traveller, made 

 very little difference to the development of the surrounding coun- 

 try. The next great factor in Australian settlement was the dis- 

 covery of artesian water under a very large area underlying some 

 of the most waterless country in the interior. One of the first sug- 

 gestions as to the possibility of finding artesian water in this 

 country, was made in a work entitled "Journals of Several Expedi- 

 tions made in Western Australia, 1829-32, under the sanction of 

 Sir James Stirling," published in London in 1833. In the intro- 

 duction, the author says : "Now our journalists assure us that they 

 have always found water by digging, sometimes with their bare 

 hands, only to the depth of one foot; if this be true, as there is 

 every reason to suppose it is, the common mode of well-sinking 

 would be tolerably certain of obtaining a supply, and the method 

 of boring so successfully attempted in France and England, called 

 the Artesian Well, might finally be called to the settler's aid with 

 an entire dependence upon its efficacy." 



The geologists always hoped to obtain artesian water, and, in 

 1851, experiments were carried out in putting down bores through 

 the Hawkesbury Sandstone, but the results were nil. 



In 1879, Mr. H. C. Russell, Government Astronomer, at a meet- 

 ing of the Royal Society of New South Wales, stated that the rain- 

 water which fell in the interior of Australia, did not flow down to 

 the sea in the river-drainage, but sank into the soil, and accumu- 

 lated underground. The actual demonstration of the existence of 

 artesian beds was first recorded by Mr. C. Wilkinson* at Officer's 

 Killarah Station, near the Darling River, where water was struck 

 at a depth of from 134 to 142 feet, and shot up above the tube a 

 distance of 26 feet. In 1901, according to Mr. Pittman, 158 bores 



* Proceedings of the Linnean Soc. of New South Wales, vi., 1881, p. 155. 



