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Western Mail, Thursday 15 June 1933, page 2
Sacrilege!
The Australian Lighthorseman was a past master of the art of locating water. I, too, had some skill in this respect, and, when advancing, or on the march, made it my nightly duty to collect the detachment's water bottles and scout around for the wherewithal to fill them. But; wherever I struck it, there, sure as there was a war on, I'd find a bunch of the boys with the emu plumes, if their units were anywhere in the vicinity.
At El Castine, alongside which we had been blazing away all day, and which was itself under observation, I stole among the deserted hovels at nightfall in search of the well. At length I found it and, though I would have sworn that nobody but myself had entered the village, there they were, like a lot of shadowy slouch-hatted spooks, manipulating the wooden wheels and emptying the vessels on the endless rope, petrol tins, jam tins, and cattees (mostly broken) of the blackish, slimy fluid they brought up.
In the Waddi Ballut I discovered a gushing, sparkling spring, cool and crystal clear; but the Lighthorsemen were temporarily absent. At last they came.
Early one morning I found them there. Sipping that nectar of the gods?
Not they! They'd dammed it and were having a swim!
147344, R.A., Forrest Grove.