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La Niña and the Making of Climate Optimism pp 115–142Cite as

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The Battle with Drought: Water, the Essential Element (1940–49)

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Abstract

Drought, dust and debt were the main ingredients of the 20-year period from the mid-1920s. After a buoyant climate optimism, which extended until the late 1920s, the 1930s and 1940s were to test the ingenuity and forbearance of Australians in regard to their climate. During this drier than average period rural enterprise took a serious battering, combined as this episode of difficult climate was with an economic downturn in the form of a worldwide depression from 1929. Due to the problems faced in the rural sector, their resolve became a matter of national importance. Yet, despite this long dry period, attitudes to the Australian climate showed an underlying optimism that the ills of the countryside could be overcome. It was thought that, with the aid of technology, the Australian rural environment could support more intensive use of the land. Following the big schemes and grand ideas for developing Australia in the 1920s, what followed was two decades of reassessment. The difficulties of climate were tackled from the point of view of the use of technology in the form of large-scale irrigation schemes to render the environment productive. As the seasons had turned from predominately good to mostly bad, above all water was viewed as the panacea—the element which once added to the land would secure the garden ideal.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Vinita Damodaran argues that environmental history must deal with capitalism as the most important architect of the world economy and the integrated repercussions for the environment globally. Vinita Damodaran, “Environmental History” in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, ScienceDirect, 2015, 2nd edition, 3, 747–755.

  2. 2.

    Both the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation were in their warm phase from 1925 to 1945/46, amplifying El Niño events and modifying La Niñas. N.J. Mantua and S.R. Hare, “The Pacific Decadal Oscillation”, Journal of Oceanography, 58, 35–44. For a detailed description of the PDO and IPO, see the Glossary.

  3. 3.

    “Prescription for National Health and Development”, Daily Examiner Grafton, February 21, 1946, 3.

  4. 4.

    “Lessons of Drought”, Farmer and Settler, November 28, 1940, 1.

  5. 5.

    Rod Home, “Rainmaking in the CSIRO: The Science and Politics of Climate Modification”, in Tim Sherratt, Tom Griffiths, and Libby Robin, eds, A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, Canberra, National Museum of Australia, 2005, 66–81.

  6. 6.

    Stuart Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s, Sydney, NewSouth Publishing, 2015, 161.

  7. 7.

    Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment, 165.

  8. 8.

    The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record was the mouthpiece of rural interests, particularly for those in the pastoral industry. There were frequent references to the need to conserve and use water wisely and to irrigation as a means to grow fodder crops to feed stock in times of drought.

  9. 9.

    “Bacblox”, “The Conservation and Control of Water”, The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record, February 16, 1938, 138–139.

  10. 10.

    Geoffrey Bolton, Spoils and Spoilers: A History of Australians Shaping Their Environment, North Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1992, 139–140.

  11. 11.

    “Severe Dust Storm: Melbourne Enveloped”, Daily Mercury, April 18, 1938.

  12. 12.

    Francis Ratcliffe, Flying Fox and Drifting Sand: The Adventures of a Biologist in Australia, Angus and Robertson, 1938.

  13. 13.

    Keith Hancock, Australia, New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1931.

  14. 14.

    See, for example, Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979.

  15. 15.

    Ion Idriess, The Great Boomerang, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1941.

  16. 16.

    James Beattie and Ruth Moran, “Engineering Eden on This ‘Rivered Earth’? A Review Article on Water Management and Hydro-Resilience in the British Empire, 1860s–1940s”, Environment and History, 23, 2017, 39–63.

  17. 17.

    Geoff Cockfield and Linda Botterill, “Rural Adjustment Schemes: Juggling Politics, Welfare and Markets”, Australian Journal of Public Administration, 65, June 2, 2006, 70–82.

  18. 18.

    Geoffrey Bolton, Spoils and Spoilers, 139–140.

  19. 19.

    William Lines, Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia, Athens and London, The University of Georgia Press, 1991, 166.

  20. 20.

    William Lines, Taming the Great South Land, 166.

  21. 21.

    S.E. Pearson, “Pastoral Problems: The Merits of Tanks and Dams”, The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record, 50, April 16, 1940, 331–332. Paroo, “Water Supply Problems”, The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record, 50, June 11, 1940, 558–559.

  22. 22.

    Glenroy, “When Man Makes Desert Nature Exacts Penalty”, The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record, 50, January 16, 1940, 35.

  23. 23.

    “How it Strikes ‘Onlooker’”, The Pastoral Review and Grazier’s Record, 50, March 1940, 245.

  24. 24.

    “Upper Hunter Farmers Hard Pressed: Conditions Worst Since 1901”, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, August 1, 1940.

  25. 25.

    “Abundance of Fodder: Effect of Rains”, Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative, February 20, 1941, 6.

  26. 26.

    “Paroo”, “A Changing Land: The Western Division of New South Wales”, The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record, 50, January 16, 1940, 31.

  27. 27.

    “Country Makes a Rapid Recovery”, Queensland Country Life, January 2, 1941.

  28. 28.

    Australian Bureau of Meteorology, “El Niño—Detailed Australian Analysis”, www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/194142.

  29. 29.

    “New South Wales Letter”, The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record, 50, February 16, 1940, 99. “Fires Rage Near Yass”, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, January 30, 1940. “Newcastle has a Chance of Rain”, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, February 1, 1940. “Bushfires: Big Outbreaks in Victoria”, Chronicle, January 11, 1940.

  30. 30.

    Near the end of January 1940 trains from the north-west unloaded 30 dead sheep at Dubbo over one weekend, while 150 dead and dying animals were removed from another stock train from Brewarrina. “Short of Grass and Water: Dry Liverpool Plains, Hunter Valley Crops Suffer”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 27, 1940.

  31. 31.

    The final estimate of 76,000,000 bushels eclipsed the previous year’s total of 59,898,000 bushels and came close to the 1932–1933 record yield of 78,870,000 bushels. “76,000,000 Bushel Harvest: Great Wheat Yield: Second Largest on Record”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 27, 1940. In 1940 the Australian wheat production stood at 5,725,900 tonnes which was only slightly below the 1933 peak of 5,818,900 tonnes.

  32. 32.

    The Sydney Morning Herald, August 28, 1940. “State Drying Up”, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 3, 1940.

  33. 33.

    “Rains—And Drought”, The Sydney Morning Herald, December 27, 1940. Bureau of Meteorology, “Southern Oscillation Index Archives—1876 to present”, www.bom.gov.au . See the Glossary for a description of the Southern Oscillation Index.

  34. 34.

    Australian Bureau of Meteorology, “El Niño—Detailed Australian Analysis”, http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/enlist/.

  35. 35.

    “Heavy Rain in Country”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 12, 1941.

  36. 36.

    “Better Summer Outlook”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 2, 1941.

  37. 37.

    “Rainfall in January”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 6, 1941. Australian Bureau of Meteorology, “Climate Statistics for Australian locations”, http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av. “Better Summer Outlook”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 2, 1941.

  38. 38.

    “Heavy Rain in Country”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 12, 1941. “Namoi Breaks Its Banks”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 13, 1941.

  39. 39.

    Rural Reconstruction Commission, “Factors Influencing Costs of Production”, A General Survey, 37. Australian Bureau of Meteorology, “Australian Rainfall Deciles, 1 April 1941 to 31 January 1942”, www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/19411942.gif. Thomas William Irish, Report of the Western Lands Commissioner for the Year Ended 30th June, 1942, Sydney, Western Lands Office, 1942. “Drought Details for 1941”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 13, 1942. “Water Supply Needs Over Week of Rain”, The Courier Mail, January 3, 1942.

  40. 40.

    Bacblox, “The Conservation and Control of Water”.

  41. 41.

    “Water Conservation Great Need of the Hunter”, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, September 20, 1940.

  42. 42.

    “Hunter Valley Water Conservation”, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, September 20, 1940.

  43. 43.

    S.E. Pearson, “Diminishing Rainfalls in the Interior”, The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record, 50, March 11, 1940, 236–237.

  44. 44.

    John Wilkinson, “Water for Rural Production in NSW: Grand Designs and Changing Realities”, Briefing Paper 26/97, Sydney, New South Wales Parliamentary Library, 1997, 30. Bruce Davidson, Australia Wet or Dry: The Physical Limits to the Expansion of Irrigation, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 1969, 89.

  45. 45.

    “Barren Wheat Lands”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 3, 1941.

  46. 46.

    “Barren Wheat Lands”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 3, 1941.

  47. 47.

    “Young Farmers Lost”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 5, 1941.

  48. 48.

    “Young Farmers Lost”, Letter to the Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 8, 1941.

  49. 49.

    “Fair Winter Outlook”, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 18, 1941.

  50. 50.

    “Unwise Land Use”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 5, 1941. “Water Cuts Defended”, August 9, 1941. “Useful Rains”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 26, 1941. “Where Rain Fell in November”, The Sydney Morning Herald, December 2, 1941. “Heat Wave Record”, The Sydney Morning Herald, December 1, 1941.

  51. 51.

    “The Dry North West”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 21, 1942. “Water Needed Outback”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 29, 1942.

  52. 52.

    Australian Bureau of Meteorology, “Southern Oscillation Index Archives—1876 to present”, www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soihtm1.shtml . “Rainfall in Country”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 7, 1942. “Maize Outlook Serious”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 18, 1942. “New Wool Clip: Improved Outlook”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 21, 1942. “Where Rain Fell in February”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 1942. Thomas William Irish, Western Lands Commissioner, Report of the Western Lands Commissioner for the Year Ended 30th June, 1942, Western Lands Office, 1942.

  53. 53.

    “Flood Rains Break Drought”, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 30, 1942.

  54. 54.

    R.W. Condon and G.H. McTainsh, “Episode 4: Western New South Wales in the 1940s”, in G.M. McKeon et al., eds, Pasture Degradation and Recovery in Australia’s Rangelands: Learning from History, Indooroopilly, Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy, 2004, 118–129.

  55. 55.

    R.W. Condon and G.H. McTainsh, “Episode 4: Western New South Wales in the 1940s”. J.C. Foley, “Droughts in Australia: Review of Records from Earliest Years of Settlement to 1955”, in Bulletin 43, Melbourne, Bureau of Meteorology, 1957, 76. Jill Ker Conway, The Road From Coorain, Sydney, Random House, 1989.

  56. 56.

    J.G. Crawford, C.M. McDonald, C.P. Dowsett, D.B. Williams, and A.A. Ross, Wartime Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand 1939–50, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1954, 37–42. In New South Wales there was a similar fall-off in sheep numbers: 1944, 56,837,300; 1945, 46,662,000; 1946, 44,076,000. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Historical Selected Agricultural Commodities, by State (1861 to Present)”, 2009, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/7124.02007-08?OpenDocument#Data.

  57. 57.

    The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has described the conditions in 1945–1946 as an El Niño event as the SOI averaged negative 9 from the beginning of June to the end of November 1946. Australian Bureau of Meteorology, “Australian Rainfall Patterns During El Niño” http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/ninocomp.shtml. However, this is disputed by other sources, such as NOAA that class ENSO as neutral due to sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean in an area known as Niño 3.4. See data set at https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Data/nino34.long.anom.data.

  58. 58.

    Australian Bureau of Meteorology, “El Niño—Detailed Australian Analysis”, http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/enlist/.

  59. 59.

    Australian Bureau of Meteorology, “El Niño—Detailed Australian Analysis”, ibid.

  60. 60.

    R.W. Condon and G.H. McTainsh, “Episode 4: Western New South Wales in the 1940s”.

  61. 61.

    Harold F. White, “Letter to the Editor: Australia’s Rainfall”, The Pastoral Review and Graziers’ Record, March 16, 1946.

  62. 62.

    Neil Barr and John Cary, Greening a Brown Land: The Australian Search for Sustainable Land Use, South Melbourne, Macmillan Education Australia, 1992, 223.

  63. 63.

    Patricia McBride, “Climate and the Peopling of Australia”, in G.L. Wood, ed, Australia: Its Resources and Development, New York, Macmillan, 1947, 33.

  64. 64.

    Patricia McBride, “Climate and the Peopling of Australia”, 33.

  65. 65.

    See, for example, the “Report on the Beef Cattle Industry in Northern Australia—1952”, by J.H. Kelly, published by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics in December 1952. It became known as the Kelly Report. John Kelly’s record of criticism and comments on his report are contained in the John Henry Kelly Papers, National Library Australia. Kelly’s field journals, from his inspections of inland New South Wales from 1945 to 1947 for the War Service Land Settlement Scheme, are also in this collection.

  66. 66.

    The editor of Livestock Bulletin, R.S. Maynard, warned in 1939 that the “development” of dry areas was “retrogressive” rather than progressive in that the large sheep runs were more productive than a number of smaller units. Maynard also argued that much of Australia was not suited to closer settlement due to the unreliability of rivers. Many private irrigation schemes, he noted, had been failures. R.S. Maynard, “Land Utilisation in Australia”, Australian Quarterly, 11, June 2, 1939, 65–72.

  67. 67.

    Tom Connors, “Closer Settlement Schemes”, The Australian Quarterly, 42, March 1, 1970, 72–85, 77.

  68. 68.

    New South Wales wheat production, for example, fell after the 1941–42 El Niño event. In 1940 the area under wheat in New South Wales was 1,772,800 ha and the production tonnage, 2,083,400. The following year 1,802,500 ha was under wheat but production had fallen to 651,400 tonnes. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Historical Selected Agricultural Commodities, by State (1861 to Present)”, 2009, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/7124.02007-08?OpenDocument#Data.

  69. 69.

    J.G. Crawford, “Rural Reconstruction”, Australian Journal of Science, October, 1943, 37.

  70. 70.

    Troy Whitford and Don Boadle, “Australia’s Rural Reconstruction Commission, 1943–46: A Reassessment”, Australia Journal of Politics and History, 54, no. 4, 2008, 525–544. See also A.W. Martin and Janet Penny, “The Rural Reconstruction Commission, 1943–47”, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 29, no. 2, 1983, 218–236.

  71. 71.

    Rural Reconstruction Commission, A General Survey, the Commission’s First Report, Canberra, Government Printer, 1944, 31.

  72. 72.

    Rural Reconstruction Commission, A General Survey, 31.

  73. 73.

    Rural Reconstruction Commission, Land Utilization and Farm Settlement, the Commission’s Third Report, Canberra, Government Printer, 1944, 6.

  74. 74.

    “Young Farmers Lost” The Sydney Morning Herald, March 5, 1941. “Young Farmers Lost” Letter to the Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 8, 1941. Rural Reconstruction Commission, Land Utilization and Farm Settlement, 6–7.

  75. 75.

    Rural Reconstruction Commission, A General Survey, 39.

  76. 76.

    For a discussion of the problems of salinity, see Neil Barr and John Cary, Greening a Brown Land: The Australian Search for Sustainable Land Use, South Melbourne, Macmillan Education Australia, 1992.

  77. 77.

    “The Dry Northwest”, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 21, 1942.

  78. 78.

    Rural Reconstruction Commission, Irrigation, Water Conservation and Land Drainage, the Commission’s Eighth Report, Canberra, Government Printer, 1945, 4.

  79. 79.

    Rural Reconstruction Commission, Land Utilization and Farm Settlement, 11.

  80. 80.

    Linda Courtenay Botterill, “Uncertain Climate: The Recent History of Drought Policy in Australia”, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 49, no. 1, 2003, 61–74. R.L. Heathcote, “Drought in Australia: A Problem of Perception”, Geographical Review, 59, no. 2, 1969, 175–194.

  81. 81.

    Tim Sherratt, “Human Elements” in Tim Sherratt, Tom Griffiths, and Libby Robin, eds, A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, Canberra, National Museum of Australia, 2005.

  82. 82.

    R.L. Heathcote, “Drought in Australia: A Problem of Perception”. Rural Reconstruction Commission, “Land Utilization and Farm Settlement”, 24–25.

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    Julia Miller

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Miller, J. (2019). The Battle with Drought: Water, the Essential Element (1940–49). In: La Niña and the Making of Climate Optimism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76141-1_5

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