yields 270,000 gallons of somewhat salty, 

 hot water a day ; for drinking, the rain- 

 water caught on iron roofs is used. Food 

 of all kinds is brought to Oodnadatta by 

 train ; the town exists for the purposes of 

 forwarding supplies by strings of camels 

 to far-away ranches and for shipping 

 produce of scattered stations and trans- 

 ferring cattle and sheep in times of 

 drought. 



BUILDING A DESERT RAILWAY 



A ride on one of the tiny trains 

 which run twice monthly to Oodnadatta, 

 equipped with extra tank cars and water 

 bags for passengers, is dreary enough if 

 one is looking for grass and water and 

 trees. To me the views of sand-dunes and 

 gibber-plains, of the sheet of Lake Eyre, 

 of mirage and dust-storms and distant 

 mesas, constituted features of a fas- 

 cinating journey. 



The Great Desert of Australia divides 

 the continent into two parts, isolating the 

 people of West Australia as completely 

 as if they were on another island. There 

 is no land communication between this 

 State and its nearest neighbor except by 

 telegraph, and the boat journey from 

 Sydney to Perth requires more time than 

 from Sydney to New Zealand and only a 

 little less than from Perth to India. 



The Commonwealth has now under- 

 taken the task of providing an overland 

 route from the Pacific to the Indian 

 Ocean. The ordinary engineering prob- 

 lems are so small that the line was laid 

 out by compass ; there are no tunnels, 

 deep cuts, or steep grades, and few cul- 

 verts and bridges are required. Sand- 

 dunes are the greatest obstruction, and 

 the amount of excavation in crossing a 

 belt of dunes 20 miles wide is more than 

 half that required for the whole 1,063 

 miles of new track (see map, pages 480- 

 481). 



The remarkable feature of the railway 

 is its location in a region uninhabited 

 even by aborigines, and where the real 

 task of the engineer is to provide water, 

 grading and track-laying being incidental. 



The preliminary surveys for the rail- 

 way were conducted by camel parties ; 

 then well-boring outfits were dragged by 

 teams of 14 cr 16 camels over the route 

 or from ports on the coast. Workmen 

 supplied with water by camel-trains were 

 set at work constructing catchment basins 



554 



