The hearing decided, in the face of indubitable evidence to the contrary, that there had been no drought in Central Australia, evidence of ample native food and water supplies and thus no mitigation for cattle spearing. A journalist for the "Adelaide Register-News" who travelled with the board during its tour of Central Australia to determine the claims of drought reported; "Five years of drought have burnt every blade of grass from the plains and left a wilderness of red sand...the wonder is that any living thing survives. Every settler visited by the Board had lost between 60 and 80 percent of his stock the drought this year alone." The day after this report was published, a settler replied in the letters to the editor that the drought made the life of one ewe worth more to Australia than "all the blacks that were ever here".