val I sauntered in the Botanic
Gardens to kill the time to dinner at 7 p.m. Being a stranger, I was
ignorant that the Gardens were closed at 6 p.m. I noticed that the few
people I had seen on entering had entirely disappeared. As the dinner
hour approached, I went to the gate and found it locked, as were the
other gates I tried to pass through. Continuing my walk, I found an
opening in the hawthorne hedge, which separated the Gardens from the
Domain, in which Government House was then situated. I crawled through,
and when I reached the lodge gates, I was asked by a policeman stationed
there, if I had been to Government House?

I said, "No."

"Then where did you come from, my friend?"

"From the Gardens."

"And how did you get here?"

I then explained the circumstances.

"Where do you belong?"

"Winton."

"What's your name?"

"Corfield."

"Yes, is that so? What are you?"

"I am one of the new members of Parliament." Then the blarney came out.

"Pass on, Mr. Corfield, your face would carry you anywhere, sir."

And so ended the incident.

In 1888, L50,000 was put on the Estimates for sinking artesian wells,
and a contract entered into with a Canadian company to sink 7,500 feet
at certain specified places. Wellshot Station was selected as one, to
encourage private enterprise, to try for water at great depths.

When at Winton, early in 1889, I was handed a telegram from Mr.
Henderson, the Hydraulic Engineer, advising me that the sinking of the
well at Wellshot had to be abandoned, and as carriers were not
procurable at Barcaldine to take the plant to Winton, it had been
decided to send it to Kensington Downs.

I immediately called a public meeting, and laid the matter before it.
The meeting decided that I should go to Barcaldine the following
morning. Owing to accidents to the coach, and want of sobriety at
several of the coach stages, we were very much behind time in arrival. I
found that I could obtain carriers to take the plant to Winton at a
reasonable price, and wired the Engineer, but, although I remained a
week in Barcaldine, I did not get even an unsatisfactory reply from that
officer.

I now received a hint that there were influences at work to prevent the
plant going to Winton, and to send telegrams through another place. I
arranged a long explanatory wire to Sir Thomas McIlwraith, to be sent
from . . . . the operator at that place cutting off Barcaldine while the
message was being sent, and