ARTESIAN WATER IN N. S. WALES AND QUEENSLAND. 4p 
An artesian bore is shown on Mr. Henderson’s map at Darby 
Point, on the Nive River, at an altitude of 1,360 feet, but it is 
not stated whether this is an overflowing well or not. Ifit bean 
overflowing well it is difficult to find any intake beds sufficiently 
high to give the necessary amount of fall, unless the source be in 
the high ridge of Cretaceous rocks referred to above, between 
Charleville and Mitchell, and trending towards Springsure. 
The decrease in the hydraulic grade between Muckadilla and 
Noorama is due, not necessarily to any actual flow of the artesian 
water in the beds towards a submarine outlet to the south-west, 
or to north-north-west, but may be owing to the gradual decrease 
in the level of the outcrop of the intake beds from north to south, 
between the latitudes of these respective bores. At Dulacca for 
example, on the railway line, between Dalby and Roma, the level 
of the outcrop is 1,050 feet. Whereas on the southern border of 
Queensland where the outcrop crosses the Dumaresq River, the 
level is only about 900 feet, and in New South Wales it is probably 
not more than about 700 feet above sea-level near Narrabri, and 
about the same near Narromine. In view therefore, of the very 
slight amount of fall (only about one foot per mile in the case of 
Cunnamulla) between the intake and point of discharge, and the 
vast frictional resistance which would be offered by the beds of fine 
sand, which would have to be traversed by the artesian water 
from the east central portion of the basin for a length of eight 
hundred miles in either direction, before the water could reach 
either the Gulf of Carpentaria or the Great Australian Bight, it 
must be the case that, in its central portions at all events, the 
basin behaves like a sealed basin, and the pressure of the water in 
the central portions of it is therefore probably more hydrostatic 
than hydraulic. Approaching however, the Gulf of Carpentaria 
or the Great Australian Bight, the artesian water may be ina 
state of somewhat stronger circulation oozing slowly through the 
porous strata until it finds an outlet in the bed of the ocean. 
As a possible explanation of the smallness of the fall between 
the intake and some of the artesian bores, if the hydraulic 
