Indiana daily times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1914-1922, 1921-09-01
- RooME. NORTHWESTERN AUS

n ROOME, NORTHWESTERN AUS
x TRALLA-"How long is the
- coastline of Western Australia ?"
asked an enthusiast from that state
who was telling me about it.
I'm blest if | know" he admitted, SO
I set to work to dig it out for myself
Having looked up the books on Western
Australia and asked the question dozen
or more times ! am convinced that the
only way the correct answer can be OBJ
tanned is to go and measure it. In
British admiralty chart, that Bible OF
those who go down to the sea in ships
1 found a rather significant warning
It was to the effect that masters Of yes
sells should be careful when navigating
the northwest coast because "it has not
as yet been surveyed or charted."
1t struck me there must be a wonder
full country behind this unsurveyed and
uncharted coastline. I find that those
ventUresOme explorers who have traversed
the northwest have brought back reports
that point to it as some day being one
of the most valuable assets of the state,
that day apparently being far distant
still, because only when people settle
there in large numbers win it become
productive
Not even along the western coast,
before you round Northwest Cape and
pass through the Dampier Islands to
the true northwest coast, has the settler
yet made a large stand. Yet that land
Is as rich as one can ask, provided com
mon sense is used in tiling 1t. Take
the case of one man who lives near
CarnaYon, near where the Gascoyne
River empties into Sharks Bay. The
white men who visited 1t reported its
bed as dry and sandy. Later explorers
did the same thing Then some one dis
covered that while its bed might be dry,
beneath it the river was flowing merrily
along and that for at least a hundred
miles back from its mouth this was true.
What more easy to do than was done by
this man l mentioned. He bored into
the ground and struck water, great
quantities of 1t, at a depth Of twenty
four feet. He sank other wells and to-
day gasoline engines and windmills are
pouring upon his acres a money pro
ducilg flood. lie found that 800 pounds
of Cperphosphate and a half ton Of lime
to the acre was all the fertilizer needed.
$ farm produces alfalfa that yield
six crops a year, fruits and vegetables,
and he has a nice income and mony
in the bank
STILL FEW WHITES
HAVE SEEN REGION.
What he did to blaze the way others
have done, too, yet between the Muir
Gibson River and the Ord River In the
far northwest and In the Kimberley gold
mine district, a wide exDanse of terri
tory more than a thousand miles long
and extending back 200 miles from the
coast there are today scarcely 1860 white
persons. There are more than twenty
rivers of varying sizes In this district
and they drain COUNTRY that is rich
with the productive red soil that Is
typical Of all Australia. Quite different
from "the miserable country that
Dampier found when he discovered it.
Like a great many others who followed
him that adventurer reported things as
be saw them without taking into CON
sideration the fact that what may have
been true during the summer when he
was there was not necessarily true all
of the time.
There are mineral riches in the North
west, too-iron and silver and lead and
copper, which sre in the ground in pay
ing quantities once a way is provided
to get it out Of the country. Between
Derby and Wyndham, small towns on the
coast 527 sea miles apart and 400 miles
from each other as the crow files, there
is believed to be some bay or harbor
which can be developed into a port from
which all the wealth Of the Northwest
can be shipped. What finds its way to
the two ports already mentioned goes
out almost without exception in small
vessels to Singapore, India, and from
there to Europe. Freemantle, the one big
port that Western Australia boasts, is a
thousand miles away. That is why an
exploring party has been ordered by the
Western Australian government to seek
for a new port.
The Northwest has a regular rainy
season and regular rainfall and already
1t has been demonstrated that the land
viii produce almost anything that is
planted and that sheep and long horned
cattle, the latter now being the princi-
pal export, can be raised there. When
Western Australia gets the population
she viii do things
There is no more romantic spot in
Australia than Ninety Mile Beach, on the
northwest coast. the place where a great
part Of the worlds supply of pearl shell
is gathered. Broome is the port Its
small population is more suggestive OF
Asia than of a European nation, for the