Water diviners are charlatans (although some are probably only self-deluded), but their credibility comes from folk who badly want to believe in them. One hundred years ago this week the London correspondent of Sydney's The Globe badly wanted to believe the story of "SAPPER STEPHEN KELLEY'S CLAIM TO FAME."
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"Sapper Kelley in very deed saved the Suvla Bay disaster from being worse than it was. He was able as a water diviner to obtain at Gallipoli where the Turks boasted no troops could find enough water to make it tenable, 30 good underground springs on the spot. The sorry part is that he was not put on the job a week earlier. Gallipoli might have been ours; the tale of lonely graves might not have been so dreadful.
"On the evening of the 11th day when the water supplies brought at immense trouble by barge from far-off Malta were almost used up [he was sent for].
" 'Could he find water for them?' Why certainly. Within a week he had sunk 30 wells. Some sapper, Kelley! He worked like fury till his job was done; and then collapsed. As they carried him down to the water's edge to be put aboard a hospital ship for Malta what a cheer the boys gave for Kelley!
"His name is blessed by the fellows who [thanks to him] were getting their full gallon a day of pure spring water, icy cold, pumped up from the depths of that arid Suvla Bay sand."
