12 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
night for five minutes; and 40 milesstill furthereast, on Buckingbong 
Station, it blotted out every trace of daylight for fifteen minutes, 
although it was nearly mid-day in the summer. At 2-15 p.m., three 
persons caught in the bush had to sit behind a stump for shelter 
and could not see their hands before them; at the same time they 
endured a sensation as if choking with dust; and when the thick of 
the storm was past, the sun was acrimson ball of fire, the strange 
light causing people to run out of their houses, thinking the world 
was on fire and the end of all things had come. 
The storm is said to have reached Albury at 2°30 p.m.; a dense 
cloud suddenly rose in the west, and seemed to be on the town in 
a moment, and almost as suddenly there was total darkness which | 
lasted twenty minutes, black as the blackest night without ray from 
moon or star. Everything moving had to stand still till it was 
over; even fowls were found, when the light returned, asleep on the 
ground, Near Narrandera, on Columbo Plain, the force of the 
wind was terrific, blowing down trees in all directions; one man 
caught in it could not sit on his horse and had to get off and hold 
the horse round the neck to keep himself from being blown away. 
At Buckingbong, Mr. Bryan Blair, who reported the storm to me, 
says that it had looked like a storm all the morning, but at 2 p.m. the 
appearance was appalling; the clouds seemed to be rolling up into 
and over one another in the wildest confusion, and every one 
feared that something dreadful was going tohappen. The forward 
motion of this storm was much more rapid than the rain-storm, 
but its character is the same—an off-set from the trades, the one 
being a very large storm carrying rain, the other a violent wind 
vortex carrying clouds of dust. It travelled from Hay to 
Narrandera, 100 miles, in 1} hour, and thence to Wagga Wagga, 
50 miles, in an hour. As the rate of progress was 50 to 60 
miles per hour, and it produced total darkness for a quarter of 
an hour, the dust cloud must have been about 15 miles wide in its 
densest part, and in the following dust cloud wider still. It is 
impossible to say how high it was; but a dense cumulous cloud 
er shuts out the light entirely, and they are sometimes fully 
3 miles thick. . 
