EXPLOSIVE OR BOOMING NOISES IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIA. 187 



On the OCCURRENCE of EXPLOSIVE or BOOMING 

 NOISES (Barisal Guns) in CENTRAL AUSTRALIA. 



By J. Burton Cleland, m.d. 



[Read before the Royal Society of N. S. Wales, September 6, Ldl\.\ 



The object of this short paper is to call attention to, and 

 to ask for suggestive explanations of, certain loud explosive 

 noises, resembling the booming of distant artillery, which 

 have been heard by myself and others in various parts of 

 central and north-western Australia. My personal experi- 

 ence of this remarkable phenomenon may be quoted from 

 my diary when encamped on the Strelley River in North- 

 west Australia, about Lat. 20° S., sixty miles east of Port 

 Headland. 1 "Friday, August 9, (1907)... At half-past eight 

 this evening (8*35), as we lay in our tent, we suddenly 

 heard a dull roar lasting several seconds, increasing in 

 loudness and then decreasing. Every one heard it and 

 looked round. The sky was quite clear and not a sign of 

 thunder. There was no apparent tremor. I thought it 

 came from the S.E., others from the N.E. Some suggested 

 it was the rumble of a herd of cattle galloping over a clay 

 pan with hollow ground below as they hear it in the Kim- 

 berly district. Mr. Giles and I wonder if it is a volcanic 

 eruption somewhere, as at Krakatoa in the eighties. Sat. 

 Aug. 10. A comet, with a long but not very brilliant tail, 

 in the east early this morning. Some of the men camped 

 twenty miles (west) from here enquired if we had heard 

 the rumble last night ; it appears their Afghan jumped up 

 and said, 'Buggy coming.' Whatever the sound was, it 

 was not caused by cattle galloping." This country consists 



1 Vide Nature, June 4, 1908, Vol. lxxviii, p. 101. 



