Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1896 — Waterspouts of the Desert [ARTICLE]

Waterspouts of the Desert

The staff of each mine in West Australia usually maketr “a camp” on the mine, which they surround with high fences of boughs to keep out the duststorms or ‘’willie-wlllles.” These “wtl-lle-willles” are more or less peculiar to the goldfields, and are really worth a few lines. They are waterspouts In sand. You may be gazing idly upon the mountains of dust and saud which go to make up a goldfield's street when suddenly you observe a tremor in the dirt, two or wisps of straw collect, a piece of paper wanders up, stays and watches the proceedings, more pieces of paper come aloug, the dust becomes quite excited and rises about a foot from the surface and twists round very rapidly in a spiral. The little pillar of dirt then moves slowly down the street or across the plain; it goes very slowly, but it attracts all the scraps in its way and sucks them up. Bach yard the “wlllle-willie" travels it gains power and Importance. It moves very deliberately, but it misses nothing in the way of smull rubbish. After a few minutes it is four or live feet high, solid at the base and spreading out Into a film of sand at its summit. The idlers watch it with a grin as it gathers force. It hums like a big top. By the time it has meaudered a hundred yards in its zigzag it is fifty feet high and soaring merrily, and then woe beside the unwary. To be caught by a “willle-wlllie” means that your very marrow Is saturated with suud and dirt. You go in a clean and wholesome creature; you emerge a battered, begrimed cripple. The •‘willle-wlllie" doesn’t trouble; it steadily grovels about for another victim. When it 1a strong enough it taqkles a tent—away goes the canvas, spinning in the air. The contents of the tent are covered with dust inches deep—not nice, clean dust, but filthy, putrescent dust of a camp where cleanliness is the last consideration. Then the “willle-wlllie" gets outside ,nud dies nway among the trees. They are sometimes 100 feet high, and then they do a good deni of damage.—Birmingham Post.