One of these tragedies attracted a great deal 
of attention when Hitchcock and Anderson 
died of thirst beside their stranded plane in 
the country south of Wave Hill, near the 
border between Western Australia and the 
Territory. Moved by the fact that these two 
airmen had died of thirst with water in the 
roots of the scrub six inches under the soles 
of their boots, the writer tried to draw atten- 
tion to the need for training airmen in the 
rudiments of water-finding by writing several 
press articles on the subject. 
Shortly after I he outbreak of war in 1939 
the writer again brought the subject to the 
notice of the Army and the Royal Australian 
Air Force, but in each case the offer to supply 
information on the subject was rejected. The 
writer was not the only person to do this; the 
Director of the South Australian Museum 
(Mr. H. M. Hale) and the Ethnologist (Mr. 
N. B. Tindale) made similar offers, and the 
latter, on request, prepared a great deal of 
data on the subject and forwarded it to 
R.A.A.F. headquarters. No use appears to 
have been made of this information, and when 
Mr. Tindale applied to have the data returned 
to him, the manuscript could not be found. 
This state of affairs persisted through 1940 
and part of 1941. When the writer attended 
a Volunteer Defence Corps training camp, a 
copy of a precis dealing with the subject was 
handed to one of the instructors, Supt. W. F. 
Johns, of the S.A. Police. Mr. Johns showed 
it to the then Commissioner of Police (General 
Leane), and as a result ihe writer was author- 
ised to act as an instructor to the V.D.C., but 
both our own Army and the R.A.A.F. remained 
uninterested. Then the American Armed 
Forces arrived in Australia, and General 
Albert Waldron (U.S. Army) sent for the 
writer, and he was appointed as an instructor 
in bushcraft to the American troops. 
Before long our own Army became inter- 
ested, and the writer, who had been rejected 
on previous attempts to join the A.I.F. through 
being over the age limit, was allowed to enlist 
as an instructor. Unfortunately, the only 
opening for a bushcraft instructor was in the 
Army Education Service, which turned out to 
be a most unsuitable branch of the Army for 
such work. 
Very illuminating was the arrival of a 
Squadron-Leader from the R.A.A.F. to obtain 
“■every possible piece of information on this 
subject *. When the writer informed him that 
all the data had been in the possession of his 
own H.Q. for the past two years, the Air Force 
man's remarks were very heated. 
Subsequently, when Australia was in danger 
of invasion by the Japanese, the writer was 
sent to Army and R.A.A.F. units to give in- 
struction in this subject of finding water in 
an emergency, as well as in lighting fires with- 
out matches, identification of edible plants, 
building of fish traps, use of birds as sentries, 
and the kindred subjects usually grouped 
under the heading of Bushcraft. At the out- 
set the writer was filled with doubt as to his 
ability to demonstrate the obtaining of water 
from trees and shrubs in areas never visited 
previously, and in a flora which was strange 
to him. but this was soon replaced by a feeling 
of confidence, for anywhere on the continent 
the fundamental rules were found to hold 
good. After two years of instructing the writer 
could claim that no demonstration had ever 
failed, and that in nearly every area of scrub 
or forest in Australia water could be obtained 
from the trunk or the roots of some species of 
tree or plant. 
Much of what had been published on the 
subject was found to be false. As far as could 
be ascertained, little or nothing appeared in 
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