ARTESIAN WATER IN WESTERN QUEENSLAND. 
333 
the teams coming from a long distance with a supply of water which the 
horses must have partly consumed on the journey; the travelling of 
stock in search of water and grass ; the consternation on a station 
already short of water on the arrival of the statutory notice of the 
passing of a travelling mob, and the vigilance of the owners in 
seeing that the mob travels over the run at the statutory pace and 
clears out within the statutory time. Such tales must be heard over 
camp fires or in the homesteads of the pastoral districts before their 
full import can be realised. 
Such being the condition of affairs, it became necessary to supple- 
ment the scanty supply of water provided by Nature, and the question 
was felt on all hands to be one of national importance. Much was 
done by the Government and private individuals in the way of con- 
serving water in dams and tanks ; but the cost was great, and the 
supply disproportionally small. In 1SS5 the trouble came to a bead, 
for not only were cattle and sheep dying by hundreds of thousands, 
but even some of the western towns were threatened with extinction 
from the want of water. Mr. J. B. Henderson, Hydraulic Engineer, 
and the writer were therefore sent out to study the structure of the 
western country, and report whether there was a chance of success in 
boring for artesian water, and, if so, to determine the site of the first 
experiment. I came to the conclusion (in confirmation of speculations 
first made in 1881)* that the whole of the western downs offered a 
promise of artesian water, and Mr. Henderson selected Blackall for 
the first bore, as that township appeared to be in the direst straits. 
There are now over 200 bores in the interior, most of them successful, 
in the aggregate, I calculate, capable of producing 125,000,000 
gallons per day, or 45,625,000,000 gallons per annum, and, in fact, 
producing not much less, since only a few of the bores are controlled. 
Such figures convey only vague ideas to most minds, and Mr. 
Henderson has kindly, at my request, supplied me with the capacity 
of some of the best known Australian reservoirs for comparison. 
Roughly speaking, the annual discharge of the Queensland artesian 
bores is 7 \ times the capacity of the Yan Yean reservoir, 14 times that of 
tho Malmsbury Coliban, 4f times that of the Prospect, and 45 times 
that of the Enoggera reservoir. f It is difficult to estimate the improve- 
ment which these bores have effected in the conditions of life in the 
West. 
It is now well known that all our artesian water, with trifling 
exceptions, occurs in the Rolling Downs or Lower Cretaceous forma- 
tion. Over this formation the Upper Cretaceous or Desert Sandstone 
lies unconformably. The latter must have covered an area of at least 
500,000 square miles, but has now been reduced by denudation to 
isolated tablelands. 
The fact that water will find its own level affords the simplest 
explanation of artesian water supply. If we find a porous stratum 
sandwiched between two impermeable strata, and cropping up at a 
higher elevation than the site of a bore which pierces the porous 
* See “ Transcontinental Railway Report/' pp. 2 and 3. 
f The figures are 
Yan Yean 6,400,000,000 gallons. 
Malmsbury Coliban ... 3,255,000,000 „ 
Prospect 10,812,313,000 
Enoggera 1,000,000,000 „ 
