Spinifex and Sand. David Carnegie
of gold, we turned our faces to the north, passing again the herd of cattle wallowing in the swamps and pans of rain water.
Clay-pans usually occur in the neighbourhood of salt lakes, and are merely shallow depressions with smooth clay bottoms. Though as a rule not more than a few inches to a foot in depth, I have seen them in places holding four to five feet of water. Immediately after rain all clay-pans are fresh, before long some will turn salt; those containing drinkable water are often distinguishable by the growth of cane grass which covers the bed, a coarse, rush-like grass of no value as food for stock. Dry for three-quarters of the year, these pans, with their impervious bottoms, hold the rain, when it fills them, for a considerable period.
Salt-water pans are pellucid and clear, as the inexperienced may find at his cost. One thirsty day, having tramped many miles horse-hunting, deceived by a crystal-clear sheet of water, I plunged in my head and hands, and, before I realised my mistake, took a deep draught with most unpleasant results. I have been more careful since that catastrophe. An effective method of clearing muddy clay-pan water is by dropping into it a sort of powdery gypsum, called "Kopi" by the natives, which is usually to be found round the margin of the salt lakes—a wonderful provision of Nature, without which the water after a short time would be useless, becoming as it does red and thick, and of the consistency of strong cocoa. Amongst the many industries started on the goldfields is the novel occupation of clearing clay-water for salt. The process was carried out by means of a series of settling tanks, into which the water was led by drains, and into the last tank the kopi was thrown; the cleared water was then bailed into vessels or casks, and carted up to whatever mining camp was being thus supplied.
Whilst on the subject of industries, I may mention that of obtaining solder from meat-tins by piling them into large heaps and lighting a fire over them. The melted lumps of solder thus formed were collected by the ordinary process of dry-blowing, and sold to tinsmiths and others engaged in the manufacture of condensers. Certainly the scarcity of water was not an unmixed curse, for it gave employment to many who would otherwise have been hard put to it to gain a living. Dam-makers, well-sinkers, water-carters, tinsmiths, condenser-fitters, wood-cutters, employees on condensing plants, water-bag makers, caretakers at Government wells, dams, and soaks, engineers, and many more, all found employment either directly or indirectly in connection with water supply.
By sinking in the bed of dry clay-pans water can usually be obtained, but unfortunately it is almost sure to be salt. The difference between clay-pans before and after rain is most marked. First we have the dry, hard bed of red clay, blistered and cracked into all manner of patterns by the sun's heat; around us the stillness of death, nothing astir unless it be the constant shimmering haze of heat which strikes our faces like the blast from a furnace. Rain falls, and within a few hours the air will be filled with the croaking of frogs and the cackling of ducks.* To my mind it is one of the most incomprehensible things in Nature that wildfowl (for not only ducks, but sometimes swans and geese are seen) know when and where rain has fallen.
But, stranger still, how do they know it is going to fall? That they would seem to do so the following will go to show. Whilst we were condensing on Lake Lapage, one moonlight night we saw a flight of ducks fly over us to the northward. No surface water then existed anywhere near us. This was on December 16th. No rain fell in the district until December 25th, but I ascertained afterwards that rain fell at Lake Carey, one hundred miles north of Lake Lapage about the same date that we had seen the ducks. The exact date I am not sure of, but in any case the ducks either foresaw the rain or knew that rain had fallen at least two hundred miles away; for they must have come from water (and at that season there was no surface water within one hundred miles of us) and probably from the coast. In either case, I think it is an extremely interesting fact, and however they arrive the ducks are a welcome addition to the prospector's "tucker-bags."
* Sir John Forrest, in his exploration of 1874, found ducks, geese, and swans on Lake Augusta—a salt lake in the arid interior, five hundred miles from the coast.
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