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The Rise and Progress of Artesian Boring. 



By J» W. Boultp.ee, Superintendent of Public Watering Places 

 and Artesian Boring. 



Artesian boring is an enterprise of comparatively recent date in this 

 Colony, and altliougL. tlie existence of supplies of artesian water was 

 demonstrated as far back as 1879, by a successful bore sunk by Mr. 

 David Brown at Kallara Station, it did not tlien attract tlie attention 

 it deserved, and private enterprise languislied entirely until tlie 

 successful completion of a bore put down by Mr. Davis upon the 

 Kerribree Station, on tbe Bourke to Huugerford road. From this 

 inception tke work bas spread until tlie present moment, and from 

 information collected by the Department it is shown that over one 

 hundred bores have been sunk by private enterprise, yielding a supply 

 of over 30,000,000 gallons of water per diem. By this means many 

 stations hitherto dependent upon wells, or the precarious supply pro- 

 vided by the conservation of the rainfall, and run off in tanks and 

 dams, are provided with a copious and permanent flow, which gives 

 such properties an increase in value that cannot be estimated. The 

 water distributed by channels 20 and 30 miles in length throughout 

 the length and breadth of the holdings, gives a double frontage in 

 each case far superior to that of the river area. 



The Government commenced operations in 1884 by undertaking a 

 series of bores upon the Bourke to Wanaaring road, under the direction 

 of the Superintendent of Drills. Some success attended the efforts made 

 — the cost of the work and the ineffective appliances used induced the 

 Department to adopt the contract system, then in vogue successfully 

 in Queensland. This system was adopted in 1890, and since that date 

 the progress has been rapid and assuring. There are now forty-three 

 Government bores, yielding a supply of over 1 6,000,000 gallons per diem . 

 The work is carried out under the direction of the Secretary for Mines 

 and Agriculture, by the Superintendent of Public Watering Places 

 and Artesian Boring. The policy of the Government in undertaking 

 this work has been primarily to provide water upon the dry and im- 

 passable stock routes of the arid portions of the Colony, and by a 

 judicious selection of sites to also furnish geological evidence of the 

 limit and extent of the water-bearing* formations. 



It was until quite recently supposed that artesian water would only 

 be found to occur in the cretaceous formation, which occupies approxi- 

 mately an area of 42,000 square miles in the north and north-western 

 portions of the Colony. Pal^eontological evidence, howejer, in the 

 form of fossil plants, txniopteris daintreei and thiiwfeldia odontoj)- 

 teroides, discovered by the Government Geologist, Mr. E. F. Pittman, 

 in the strata from the Coonamble and Moree bores, demonstrates the 



