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indicates that during the summer months water was obtainable from only
two sources - soakage holes near the town and the Chinaman's Garden
Well (NSWP02). Water carried from the soakage holes, which were
probably at a site about three-quarters of a mile from the town, cost a
shilling and sixpence a cask, while that from Chinaman's Garden Well cost
two shillings and sixpence a cask.
Correspondence from the National Australia Bank archives (NAB3, Fol 25,
15 December 1884) confirms that J.A. Scott, then an innkeeper and
contractor at Yantara, constructed a Government Dam near Milparinka in
October 1884 to provide an artificial catchment for surface run-off. Scott
profited four hundred pounds from this contract, the product of which was
subsequently mentioned as being 'a pot hole on the other side of Evelyn
Creek'. The 'pot hole' was reserved for domestic use, and probably did not
hold water for most of the summer months. Being reserved for domestic
use it was unavailable for use by travelling stock, and probably not
particularly satisfactory.
By inference the only source of water for travelling stock at Milparinka was
the Milparinka (Government) Well, hence the reason for it's continued
existence. It was not popular- 'The Government Well has the distinction of
being the only brackish water in the district. It takes fully a week to break
stock into drinking it and it is only in exceptionally droughty seasons that
the well is used at all... For about two years the well has been idle and now
that it has been recently started up again teamsters and others avoid it and
go higher up the creek to a private well' (Sturt Recorder, 31 May 1895:2).
With the cessation of the Tibooburra Telegraph, little information is readily
available about the water supply at Milparinka between 1890 and 1895, but
a letter in the Sturt Recorder indicates that by 1895 the Government dam
was not in a very good condition - 'On Friday morning last, having taken a
constitutional damwards I saw an individual driving horses out of the tank
area... The horses not only drink there but they damage the several drains
which feed the dam. Consequently when the rain falls the silt and refuse
are much greater and the water becomes tainted.. .' (Sturt Recorder, 12
April 1895:2) Two years later the state of the dam had worsened. 'The
dam... is in a horrible state. There is a fringe of weeds round the edge of
the water, about twenty feet broad, which if cut and cleared off would
probably in bulk amount to twelve dray loads. Outside of that there are
dead rabbits which would fill another dray and which with the next rain
would be incorporated with the water. The wire netting fence is out of
repair and a good many live rabbits are inside the enclosure, to add in time
to the dead carcases already there.. .'(Sturt Recorder, 6 November,
1897:2).
A letter to the Sturt Recorder in May 1895 was the first in a series of
diatribes on the subject of water. In March 1896 the Public Well at
Milparinka was referred to as a white elephant, and a call was made for the
reconstruction of a dam upon Evelyn Creek to conserve water on those
rare occasions when sufficient rain fell to make the creek run. Much of the