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‘From These Youth Has Gone’: Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920–1947
Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton
Abstract This article analyses major events during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s affecting the Lachlan region, in New South Wales, in order to assess their relative impact on population change. The analysis juxtaposes the demographic changes taking place against the economic context of the time. The Lachlan region is compared with the four other wheat- sheep regions of New South Wales and with the State generally. The paper demonstrates that population decline in the Lachlan region in the 1930s and 1940s was substantially greater than that of other wheat-sheep regions and of the State of New South Wales generally, and sets out to explain this anomaly. The Depression, the Second World War, drought over a sequence of years, and changing technology are shown, in combination, to be the underlying causes of substantial change that heralded the long-term drift of population from regional and rural NSW; especially so in the Lachlan region. In November 1941, the Sydney Morning Herald published a lengthy article entitled, ‘Deserted country towns’, addressing what it regarded as a disturbing depopulation trend in the Lachlan region of New South Wales (NSW). The article was particularly concerned about the exodus of youth from the region’s towns and villages, using somewhat emotionally- charged language, such as: ‘From these youth has gone’. 1 The motivation for our study was to obtain a clearer understanding of this trend, which elsewhere had already caused substantial social disruption. 2 The central questions underpinning the research were as follows: Was the decline in population more severe in the Lachlan than other regions, as suggested by the above article? When did the decline in population commence? What were the principal causes? Were young people particularly affected? The intent was to use the Lachlan as a case study to illuminate symptoms and events that were common throughout much of rural Australia. Moreover, because these events were concentrated over a shorter period of time in the Lachlan than elsewhere, the effects and their causes could be discerned more readily.
1 ‘Deserted Country Towns: Exodus to Industrial Centres; Ghost Villages in the West’, Sydney Morning Herald 14 November 1941, p. 6. 2 A. Laoire, ‘Matter of Life and Death? Men, Masculinities and Staying “Behind” in Rural Ireland’, Sociologica Ruralis , 41 (2001), pp. 220–36; C.L. Beale, ‘Rural Depopulation in the United States: Some Demographic Consequences of Agricultural Adjustments’, Demography , 1 (1964), pp. 264–272; W. Zelinsky, ‘Changes in the Geographical Patterns in the Rural Population of the United States’, Geographical Review , 52 (1962), pp. 492–524; J. Saville, Rural Depopulation in England and Wales, 1851–1951 (London, 1957); S.A. Cudmore, ‘Rural Depopulation in Southern Ontario’, Transactions of the Canadian Institute , 9 (1912), pp. 261–67.
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Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947
A NSW government deputation, whose principal objective was to gauge the extent of economic devastation in and beyond the lower Lachlan, caused by the long drought, further illustrates the unique plight of the Lachlan in the NSW wheat growing sector. In March 1941, senior public service figures, led by the Minister for Lands, William Yeo, were dispatched to the region known in the Lands portfolio as the States’ ‘south-west’. This region comprised the lower Lachlan region, as well as the town of Hay and surrounds in the north-western reaches of the Murrumbidgee region. In the town of West Wyalong, Yeo met the wheat farmers who occupied properties located within a radius of 100 miles from the town. There, he discovered that up to 2,000 farmers were in danger of losing their acreages. Yeo lamented that the region covering the lower Lachlan was never suited to wheat and that over the past two decades and more, governments in NSW had made a ‘“tremendous mistake” in splitting up marginal areas into small holdings’. 3 Yeo’s bleak summation of the plight of wheat farmers in and beyond the lower Lachlan was the only time that a Lands Minister, or any other Minister of government in NSW, had confessed to policy incompetence, or at least to serious error in closer settlement, throughout the 80-year period since the emergence of free selection before survey in 1861, under which land in unsurveyed NSW was first opened up for wheat growing on a massive scale. The years prior to and following the Second World War witnessed the commencement of a long population decline in the Lachlan region. This had been observed several decades earlier in Europe, and at least 15 years earlier in the United States and in other Australian regions such as large swathes of regional Victoria, but it seemed to have arrived somewhat as a surprise to people in the Lachlan region. Although there were common causes across Europe, North America and Australia, four influences had their own idiosyncratic outcomes. These influences were the Great Depression, the Second World War, drought and technical change in agriculture. 4 In addition, a particular Australian backdrop and catalyst was the formidable remoteness of rural settlement (the population of the Lachlan in 1947 was 107,364 with a population density of 1.27 persons/km 2). This article attempts to illuminate the economic history of the Lachlan region by reconciling our previous knowledge of events during the period with an analysis of the demographic changes that took place between the censuses of 1921 and 1947. These years brought economic boom as well as bust. The 1920s drew many workers into a range of jobs in the Lachlan, from small-scale manufacturing devoted to maintaining agricultural equipment, to building and construction industries, and to farm labouring.
3 ‘Hardships of farmers: Minister’s tour’, Sydney Morning Herald 1 March 1941, p. 15. 4 The rapid spread of motorised transport was also significant, but in Australia as elsewhere, the mass consumption of the private motor vehicle was not as significant in the 1940s as in the following decade. For a study of the mass production and mass consumption of motor cars, and its impact on the post- Second World War economy of Australia, see P. Stubbs, The Australian Motor Industry: A Study in Protection and Growth (Melbourne, 1972).
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Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton
Prosperity, however, did not endure. The economic tide turned in the ensuing decade and the migratory flow from urban to rural environments slowed down, and subsequently reversed. The downturn was so severe that in various locations within the Lachlan region the population in 1947 was far below that of 1921. The section below addresses the geographical context of the Lachlan Valley, an area of 84,700 km 2, within the NSW wheat-sheep belt. This is followed by one section devoted to each of the four main questions. These sections indicate that (a) population decline in the Lachlan was more severe than in other comparable agricultural regions; (b) the decline commenced in the late 1930s and was concentrated into the following decade; (c) the principal causes were a delayed response to the Depression, the effect of the Second World War in widening the perspective of the young, technical change in agriculture and the drought; and (d) young workers were the main group of migrants. The concluding section then summarises and draws these issues together.
Geographical context of the Lachlan We contrast the Lachlan region of NSW with four other rural regions of the State, and with the State generally. Our analysis shows the Lachlan to be similar to the other four regions to 1933, but with more extreme depopulation after that. The five rural regions that comprise the wheat-sheep zone, from north to south, are: the North West (Border Rivers, Gwydir, Namoi, Castlereagh), the Macquarie-Bogan, the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee and the Murray (see Figure 1). These regions are defined by river systems that flow in a general east-west direction, with the eastern end at higher altitudes and generally in more temperate climate zones, experiencing lower temperatures and higher rainfall than the western reaches. Together, they constitute a major component of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s most important farming region; in contemporary times, the Basin accounts for 40 per cent (some $15 billion) of the total gross value of Australia’s agricultural production. 5 Since the early years of the twentieth century, these five regions have produced sufficient wheat, generally, to enable the State to be in surplus, generating significant export revenues. 6 The exceptions were drought years, which sometimes resulted in massive declines in output, requiring NSW to import from elsewhere in the country, despite transport difficulties emanating, for example, from war conditions. 7 In exceptionally desperate years, NSW also imported wheat from the world market (chiefly from the United States and Canada). Between 1920 and 1950, wheat yields increased
5 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Managing the Murray-Darling Basin’ in Completing the Picture— Environmental Accounting in Practice [2012] www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Latestproducts/ 4628.0.55.0001Main%202012?opendocument&e=Summary&prodno=4628.0.55.001&issue= May%202012& num=&view [accessed 15 May 2013]. 6 Government of New South Wales, Railway Commissioners of New South Wales (Annual Reports) (various years). 7 Department of Commerce and Agriculture, ‘The food front’, News Bulletin of the War Agricultural Committees of Australia , 2(2) (1945), p. 1
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Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947
Figure 1 Major sheep-wheat regions in NSW
Source : GEODATA TOPO 250K Series 3 Topographic Data, Geoscience Australia, 2010.
significantly (from an average of 0.75 to 1.20 tonnes per hectare), as did aggregate output and surplus from the NSW wheat-sheep belt. 8 This was a period during which livestock farms were wholly or partly converted to more profitable wheat production. Wool growing, nevertheless, remained an important activity, and many properties combined wheat and wool to capture the advantages of diversification.
Decline in population in the Lachlan relative to other regions The method adopted in this study was to develop demographic and other statistics, and to augment these with material from the published literature and newspapers articles. To
8 Department of the Environment, ‘Water, Heritage and the Arts’, Australian natural resources atlas [2001] 53 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 54 Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton source and tabulate the demographic statistics, we adopted the approaches described by Pollard et al. , which centred on the construction of population distributions based on both actual and projected data. 9 The demographic data were derived from the censuses of 1921 , 1933 and 1947. 10 The three sections of Figure 2 compare populations across three regions: NSW, the four wheat-sheep belt regions other than the Lachlan, and the Lachlan itself. They also provide a comparison between 1921 and 1947. It is clear that the population distributions for NSW and the four regions were similar to one another for 1921 and 1947. For 1921, they indicate losses in the age groups between 20 and 34 years as a result of various causes including war deaths, lower post-war fertility, and out-migration; in 1947 they provide some early signs of the post-Second World War baby boom, and reveal the impact of a lower birth rate during the Depression and war years being manifest in the age groups between five and 19 years. For both NSW and the four wheat-sheep belt regions other than the Lachlan, population increased for all age categories over the 27-year period. Although the population distribution of the Lachlan bears some resemblance to the general picture for NSW and the four other regions in 1921, it reveals some great differences almost three decades on. First, the baby boom was not yet apparent in 1947 in the Lachlan. Moreover, except for the age group 15–19, there was a decline in the population of every age group below 34 years, and an increase in every five-year category older than 34 years. This points first to an aging population in the Lachlan between 1921 and 1947; greater than that which took place in the remaining wheat-sheep regions. Second, it explains the lack of a baby-boom effect, resulting from a declining population in the child-bearing age groups. A summary of the overall population decline in the Lachlan is seen by the fall in the region’s share of the NSW overall population from 4.8 per cent to 3.6 per cent between 1921 and 1947. Table 1 compares the Lachlan’s population as a proportion of the five wheat-sheep regions and reveals that population did decline more rapidly over this period in the Lachlan. Also this decline was experienced in every age group. The principal finding of this paper is that population change between the early 1920s and late 1940s, and in Table 1 Population of the Lachlan as a proportion of the Five Wheat-Sheep Regions of NSW Age group 0–14 15 –29 30 –44 45 –60 60 –74 75+ % 1921 25.2 25.2 25.7 25.8 25.7 25.5 % 1947 22.7 21.5 22.0 22.9 22.9 23.1 Source : Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1921; Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1947. 9 A.H. Pollard, F. Yusuf and G.N. Pollard, Demographic Techniques , 2nd edn (Sydney and Oxford, 1981). 10 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1921 (Australian Government) (Melbourne, 1921); Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1933 (Commonwealth Government) (Canberra, 1933); Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1947 (Australian Government) (Canberra, 1947). 54 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 55 Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947 Figure 2 Population distributions for 1921 and 1947 for NSW, the four wheat-sheep regions other than the Lachlan, and the Lachlan Source : Adapted from Australian Bureau of Statistics, Censuses of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1921 and 1947. 55 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 56 Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton particular the rate of decline from the thirties onwards, was considerably greater in the Lachlan region than in the four other wheat-sheep regions and in the State of NSW as a whole. The timing of population decline The next step in the analysis was to focus more closely on population movements in the Lachlan region in order to understand more clearly the timing of decline. The Lachlan’s trends for in- and out-migration from 1921 to 1933 were compared with similar trends from 1933 to 1947. To better understand the population change between 1921 and 1933, the actual population distribution in 1933 was compared with a projected 1933 population. To obtain this projection, the population distribution for the Lachlan for 1921 was updated to 1933 by the rate of change based on the 1932–34 NSW life tables. 11 Then the projected age distribution for 1933 was compared with the actual distribution in that year to estimate the level of migration. A second comparison was then made for 1947 by updating the 1933 population distribution for the Lachlan, based on the 1932–34 NSW life tables. Again, the projected age distribution for 1947 was compared with the actual distribution in that year. While this procedure assumes no decline in the rate of mortality, such an assumption probably leads to a reasonable estimate of expected numbers in the various age categories because advances in medicine having large mortality impacts were still to come in the 1950s. 12 Figure 3(a) reveals only small amounts of migration for the Lachlan between 1921 and 1933. Importantly, the only minor in-migration was for the age groups 25–29 years and 30–34 years. In contrast, Figure 3(b) shows a substantial level of migration between 1933 and 1947 from the Lachlan in all the working age categories. A comparison between parts (a) and (b) of Figure 3 shows that there was little migration from the Lachlan prior to 1933 (and possibly a small inflow), but a large outflow between 1933 and 1947. This is as far as the analysis of the census can take us. In order to be more precise about the date of the substantial outflow of population from the Lachlan between 1933 and 1947, the next section considers other historical evidence about the region. Such historical analysis reveals that it is likely that the majority of this emigration took place during the 1940s, given the limited employment opportunities in the cities during the Depression and prior to the Second World War. Why did the population decline? Our objective is to disentangle, as effectively as possible, the effects of the Depression, of the Second World War, of drought, and of changing technology. Given that the Lachlan 11 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1933; Australian Joint Life Tables 1932-1934 (Commonwealth Government) (Canberra, 1936). 12 The annual crude death rate for NSW was 9.26 per 1,000 for 1921-25 and 9.65 per 1,000 for 1947-50. Government of NSW, Official Yearbook of NSW 1941 –42 and 1943 –44 (Sydney, 1946), p. 88; Government of NSW, Official Yearbook of NSW 1950-51 (Sydney, 1955), p. 260. 56 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 57 Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947 Figure 3 Differences between observed and projected age distributions for the Lachlan population in 1933 (a) 1933, and (b) 1947 Source : Adapted from Australian Bureau of Statistics, Censuses of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1921, 1933 and 1947 57 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 58 Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton was an agriculturally-based economy at that time, it is necessary to review events in the Australian agricultural sector. The period between 1920 and 1947 was an extremely difficult time for the Australian economy. There was a series of shocks, with hardly enough time to recover from one before the next inflicted its harm on the economy. 13 One estimate shows that real GDP was no higher in 1939 than 1914. 14 Another estimates only a 13 per cent growth over this period. 15 Irrespective of which estimate is preferred, it is clear that shocks were severe, with significant impacts on Australia’s rural population. Despite some uncertainty following the lifting of wartime restrictions, generally favourable economic conditions prevailed for agriculture during the 1920s. The subsequent decade experienced a number of events that exerted considerable pressure on agriculture. The Great Depression was followed by the advent of another world war. Successive drought years caused immense hardship while technical change in agriculture proceeded apace. 16 In 1920, expectations for Australian agriculture were great. 17 Indeed, for those farmers with low levels of debt, prosperous conditions prevailed. Wheat growers in particular ‘benefited from good prices which held, in varying degrees, between 1915 and 1929’. 18 A perspective on agriculture from 1925 would have portrayed a rosy picture: there was ‘a quickening of the belief in an almost unlimited future for primary production, and it gave currency to the misleading aphorism ‘Australia Unlimited’. 19 Nevertheless, the seeds of a formidable problem had already been sown. Many farmers confident of the prospect of good times ahead had, during the 1920s, invested heavily in land and machinery. From virtually no tractors in NSW in 1918, approximately 6,400 were in use on farms some ten years later. 20 Likewise, after the First World War, public sector expenditure in agriculture expanded rapidly through soldier settlement schemes. The overcapitalisation (both private and public) and associated higher debt levels in agriculture probably created tension in the sector. Even skilled farmers on properties of reasonable size and quality would require several years of sustained high output prices to pay off their accumulated debts. 21 When wheat and other commodity prices collapsed in the years of the Great Depression from 1929, even the more efficient farmers found themselves in trouble. As Schedvin states: ‘the extension of the margin of cultivation [in NSW] involved 13 I.W. McClean, Princeton History of the Western World: Why Australia Prospered: The Shifting Sources of Economic Growth (Princeton, 2012). 14 I.W. McClean and J.J. Pincus, Living Standards in Australia 1890-1940: Evidence and Conjectures (Working Paper in Economic History, no. 6) (Canberra, 1982). 15 B. Haig, ‘New estimates of Australian GDP: 1861-1948/49’, Australian Economic History Review , 41 (2001), pp. 1 –34. 16 J.G. Crawford et al., Wartime Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand (Stanford, 1954). 17 A.G.L. Shaw, ‘History and Development of Australian Agriculture’, in D.B. Williams (ed.), Agriculture in the Australian Economy (Sydney, 1967). pp. 1 –28 (p. 17). 18 R. Bromby, Unlocking the Land: The Saga of Farming in Australia . (Melbourne, 1989), p. 106. 19 C.B Schedvin, Australia and the Great Depression: A Study of Economic Development and Policy in the 1920’s and 1930’s (Sydney, 1970), p. 62. 20 NSW Government, The Official Year Book of New South Wales 1928-29 (Sydney, 1930), p. 565. 21 B.R. Davidson, European Farming in Australia: An Economic History of Australian Farming (Amsterdam, 1981). 58 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 59 Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947 a capitalization which barely justified even the comparatively high prices ruling in the early 1920s; and it was to add substantially to the burden of adjustment when prices fell below the costs of even the most efficient producers’. 22 The situation for most soldier settlers was far worse. From the second half of the 1800s, governments in Australia implemented programs which encouraged the relocation of families to rural environments. Ideological notions of agrarian fundamentalism, which held that the more equitable distribution of land between the classes was imperative to nation- building, were partly responsible for the emergence of these ideas. 23 Also there was a widespread belief that technological advancements would overcome limitations extant in climate and soil, even in the worst areas such as the Australian Mallee country, located in the south west corner of NSW. Mallee country is named after its natural vegetation: eucalypts that are typically multi-stemmed, with roots containing fresh drinking water. (The aboriginal word mali means water.) Mallee areas comprise low lying, flat land with relatively low rainfall and infertile, sandy soils—indeed sand dunes often dominate the visual landscape. 24 Throughout much of the first half of the twentieth century, wheat farms proliferated on such dry lands, with shallow soils that were later only considered suitable for grazing, and totally unsatisfactory for much of the crop-based agriculture that had been developing. Governments invested in railway construction to facilitate closer settlement inland, based on the wide development of agriculture. 25 Successful outcomes in free selection and soldier settlement did occur. However this was far from the norm. In many cases, closer settlement schemes positioned new farm families on unviable farms. Many such farmers, who were ‘structured out of agriculture were not marginal because of their inability to farm, but because their farms were structured to be marginal to begin with’. 26 Moreover, as the esteemed authority on farming, Samuel Wadham (Professor of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne) stated at the time, the endeavour to establish a system of small- scale farming was ‘probably the most stupid’ public policy of the era. 27 Soldier settlement in the 1920s could not have been financially viable because ‘it was impossible to establish farmers on the land unless they had some initial capital’. 28 Moreover, the agricultural sector needed properties which employed relatively little labour if their products were to compete effectively on the world stage. 22 Schedvin, Australia and the Great Depression , p. 68. 23 T.P. Goven, ‘Agrarian and Agrarianism: A Study in the Use and Abuse of Words’, Journal of Southern History , 30 (1964), pp. 35 –47; G.C. Fite, ‘The Historical Development of Agricultural fundamentalism in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Farm Economics , 44 (1962), pp. 1203 –11. 24 S. Jacobs, A Grazier’s Guide to the Mallee country of Western New South Wales (Sydney, 1989), pp. 1 –3. 25 T. Henzell, Australian Agriculture: Its History and Challenges (Collingwood, 2007); J. Gunn, Along Parallel Lines: A History of the Railways of New South Wales, 1850 –1986 (Carlton, 1989); R. Lee, The Greatest Public Work: The New South Wales Railways, 1848 –1889 (Sydney, 1988). 26 F. Vanclay, ‘The Impacts of Deregulation and Agricultural Restructuring for rural Australia’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 38 (2003), pp. 81 –94 (p. 90). 27 Shaw, ‘History and development of Australian agriculture’, p. 18. 28 Davidson, European Farming in Australia , p. 296. 59 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 60 Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton The 1930s were torrid times for Australian agriculture. The Great Depression was a period of low demand and low prices on international commodity markets. For example, between 1930 and 1935, wheat prices remained obstinately below four shillings per bushel, which was widely regarded as a reasonable break-even level, and there was only a brief respite in 1936 and 1937, when wheat prices rose above this level. This was an experience far removed from the relatively halcyon days of the 1920s, and was certainly far below the expectations of most farmers. Landholders looked to governments for assistance. In its initial policy pronouncements of 1930, the Federal Scullin Labor government implemented a ‘Grow More Wheat’ campaign, which appeared to promise the floor price of four shillings a bushel. 29 Farmers responded by producing a significantly increased crop during an excellent growing season. However, in the event, the general economic downturn and the oversupply of wheat on international markets prevented the Scullin government, and its federal successors, from obtaining the finance to support prices in this way, and many farmers received less than half of this price when their produce was delivered to the local railway stations. Nevertheless, over the ensuing years governments did provide support directly and indirectly to Australian farmers. There was a 25 per cent devaluation of the Australian currency in 1931, which made agricultural exports more competitive. Various State farm relief legislative reforms prevented foreclosure on farm debt, and under a policy ‘to share the losses’ of the Depression, the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court reduced ‘money wages by a quarter’. 30 In addition, by 1938 two-price schemes had been introduced, under which regulated high domestic prices provided subsidies for exports, for dairy, fruit and wheat. 31 As with all arrangements to support agriculture, governments were caught in the dilemma of desiring to assist farm families through hard times while at the same time fostering sectoral efficiency. The balance during the 1930s seems to have swung strongly towards the welfare-maintaining objective. Few wheat farmers left the industry, as indicated by the fact that the area under wheat in 1939 was only 12 per cent less than that of the late ‘twenties. This occurred despite the fact that the Royal Commission on the Wheat, Flour and Bread Industries in 1934 reported that ‘the costs of one-third of the wheat farmers were so high that they could not look forward to making profits at any foreseeable prices’. 32 While times were gruelling on the land, they were extreme for many in the large population centres. Newspapers recorded the departure of long-term unemployed workers from the cities in their attempt to ensure the survival of their families. 33 By 1932, the overall level of unemployment peaked at over 31 per cent in NSW and remained well above 29 B. Dyster, and D. Meredith, Australia in the International Economy in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1990). 30 A.G.L. Shaw, The Economic Development of Australia (Camberwell, 1973). 31 R.G. Mauldon, ‘Price policy’, in D.B. Williams (ed.), Agriculture in the Australian Economy , 3rd edn (Sydney, 1990), pp. 310 –28. 32 Shaw, ‘History and development of Australian agriculture’, p. 23. 33 ‘City unemployed on country jobs’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 March 1934, p. 16. 60 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 61 Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947 1920 levels until the onset of the Second World War. 34 For many, life in the cities was tougher than in the country, where at least food was generally available. For farming in Australia, the first half of the 1940s occasioned wartime restrictions, but overall output prices and farm incomes increased. On the input side, a major impact was the reduction in the size of the farm workforce during 1942 and 1943 as enlistments in the armed services almost doubled to more than 740,000 men and women, in response to the perceived threat of Japanese invasion. 35 There were also shortages of farm materials in the process of conversion to arms production. 36 Moreover, the availability of superphospate fell in 1942–43 as a consequence of Japan’s invasion of Nauru; the quantity of imported rock phosphate was just over 0.3 million tonnes in the succeeding 12-month financial period, which was less than half that of the average over the four years to 1938–39. 37 This coincided with much of the ‘Second World War Drought’ between 1937 and 1945. The rainfall record for Grenfell in the mid-Lachlan for the wheat growing seasons over the eleven-year period ending 1947 shows that only two seasons, 1939 and 1942, could be regarded as average or better, possessing both reasonable pre-season soil moisture and above median in-season rainfall. Conditions were even worse in the Lower Lachlan, where only a single year (1939) could be regarded as satisfactory. One media article declared the 1940 NSW wheat crop the worst in 20 years. 38 The following year was another rather poor season, especially in the Lachlan region. In the Forbes district of the upper Lachlan it was reported, ‘... a larger percentage than usual of the crops is being grown on stubble ground because of the failure of the crops last season ... Most farmers in the Forbes-Caragabal-Quandialla area delayed sowing because of the risk of the grain malting in the ground’. 39 Dry conditions in the Lachlan returned in 1944, with one comparison likening the dry, dusty red sky conditions to the worst years of the Federation drought between 1895 and 1903; both 1902 and 1944 were characterised by ‘strong winds and blinding dust storms’. 40 Abnormally dry seasons led to reduced agricultural output and to falling demand for agricultural labour. Owners of some marginal farms simply walked away, leaving the banks to disperse the remaining assets. The 1940s was a decade of accelerating mechanisation for Australian agriculture. In the mid-1930s, almost two-thirds of rural land was sown and harvested by horse-drawn machinery; this proportion declined to one-third in 1941–42. Within a further six to seven years, horse cultivation had all but vanished, despite the restricted importation of tractors 34 C. Forster, ‘Australian unemployment, 1900 –1940’, Economic Record , 41 (95) (1965), pp. 426 –50 (p. 434). 35 Crawford et al., Wartime Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand , p. 41. 36 Davidson, European Farming in Australia , p. 325. 37 Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Official Yearbook, 1951, p. 1017. 38 ‘Wheat harvest in NSW: smallest crop since 1919 –20’, Adelaide Advertiser, 27 March 1941, p. 10. 39 ‘Delayed wheat sowing, rain badly needed, less fallow than usual’, Sydney Morning Herald , 12 May 1941, p. 6. 40 ‘The drought’, The Lachlander, 7 December 1944, unpaginated. 61 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 62 Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton throughout most of the war. 41 Tractor purchases expanded, following the Japanese surrender. 42 This process of mechanisation was an irreversible trend that permanently reduced the need for farm labour; an important factor in population decline. With shipping diverted to the war effort, agricultural exports could have been adversely affected, if it had not been for United Kingdom and Australian government interventions in major agricultural markets. The United Kingdom purchased the total wool clip during the Second World War, while making contractual obligations to the extensive purchase of Australian meat, dairy produce, eggs, dried and canned fruit. The Australian Wheat Board (AWB) was established in 1939 and wheat prices were fixed at profitable levels for efficient producers. For farmers, these arrangements meant that output prices were higher and more stable than those of the 1930s. Net farm income increased from £44 million in 1938–39 to £147 million in 1945–46. 43 Farm debt fell as a consequence of these higher incomes, but farms were still run-down because of the shortage of inputs, such as superphosphate and labour. 44 After the Second World War, mechanisation hastened the shift towards larger acreages and reduced the demand for agricultural labourers. 45 We now turn to the issue of apportioning the changes in the age distribution of the population of the Lachlan to the three principal causes: technical progress in agriculture and drought, the widening horizons of the rural population to envisage the possibility of moving to the cities after the Second World War, and the delayed impact of the Depression. In the first case, the total reduction in agricultural labour and their dependants between 1933 and 1947 was apportioned equally across the working age distribution between the ages of 15 and 64 years. In the second case it was possible to use the age distribution of those enlisting for war service and their dependants as an indicator of those who were more likely to be attracted to life outside the Lachlan after the Second World War. Thirdly, once the impact on the age distribution of the above two factors were accounted for, the residual change was considered to mainly be caused by the delayed impact of the Depression on the region. More details of these procedures are now provided. The displacement of labour from agriculture was due primarily to advances in technology, to the Second World War drought and to the relative unattractiveness of agricultural employment. In 1947, there were 5,477 fewer persons engaged in agriculture in the Lachlan, than in 1933. 46 The age distribution of this group is unknown, and for this analysis it had to be assumed that it was equally distributed across the male working age 41 Davidson, European Farming in Australia , pp. 339 –340; Crawford et al., Wartime Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand , p. 226. 42 Crawford et al . Wartime Agriculture in Australia and New Zealand , p. 114. 43 Ibid. , p. 128. 44 A.G.L. Shaw, ‘Colonial Settlement 1788 –1945’, in D.B. Williams (ed.), Agriculture in the Australian Economy, 3rd edn (Sydney, 1990), pp. 1 –18. 45 ‘The average farm is bigger’, Sydney Morning Herald , 30 May 1949, p. 2. 46 Australian Bureau of Statistics , Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1933 ; Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1947 . 62 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 63 Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947 Figure 4 Major influences on migration from the Lachlan, 1933 to 1947 (1947 age groups) Source : Adapted from (a) Australian Bureau of Statistics, Censuses of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1921, 1933 and 1947; and (b) Australian War Memorial, World War 2 Nominal Roll, Online search by place of enlistment within Australia, http://www.ww2roll.gov.au/PlaceSearch.aspx . groups from 15 to 64 years in the same proportion as the overall population in these age groups. This seems to be a reasonable assumption, because while on the supply side of the agriculture labour market, the young would have been more likely to leave, they were probably more in demand because of their flexibility towards using new technologies. Figure 4 illustrates the estimated age distribution of those migrating from the Lachlan between 1933 and 1947 as a consequence of the combined impact of advances in agricultural technology, the Second World War drought and the unattractiveness of agricultural employment (shown as the first set of bars in grey). This estimate includes dependants of the workers who left. Next, the age distribution of those enlisting for war service minus war deaths was used as a basis for estimating the number of individuals whose horizons had been widened by this service, and who were thus more likely to re-locate after the Second World War. This age distribution was adjusted to include dependants who would also have migrated with them. The number of such dependants was estimated by the ratio of males to dependants for each age category in the general population. The age distribution of those migrating due to this war (or “wider-horizons”) effect is also shown in Figure 4 (as the unshaded bars). Figure 4 also contains an estimate of emigration from the Lachlan as a result of all factors other than the Second World War and displacement emanating from the absence of agricultural work. Importantly, these other factors included displacement due to the Depression. For the reasons outlined earlier, the Depression probably had little impact on the Lachlan during the 1930s because there were few prospects for employment in the 63 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 64 Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton cities. However, the effect of the emergence of war industries in the metropolis of Sydney and in the major provincial centres of NSW (and to a limited extent in Victoria) was to provide such opportunities and to release the pressure that had been building-up during the 1930s. The Lachlan region possessed no major provincial centres and as a result a multitude of adults departed from the region, particularly younger workers, as shown in Figure 4 (by the third set of bars in black shading). If this (delayed) impact of the Depression had been the major component of the residual effect of Figure 4, it was of similar magnitude to the War impact estimated above. Were young people particularly affected? Summarising the effects observed in the previous section provides an estimate of the net migration from the Lachlan between 1933 and 1947 from all causes, by age category (see Figure 3). This enables an assessment of whether the young were particularly affected. Just over 45 per cent of these migrants were aged between 15 and 29 years in 1947. Also, the discussion above indicates a high probability that many of these people left the region during the 1940s, as jobs became available in the cities and regional towns. This tends to confirm the original impressions gained from reading the 1941 article ‘From these youth has gone’. There was an alarming exodus of young, working-age people from the Lachlan during the 1940s. Table 2 provides a more accurate assessment by estimating within each age category the proportion of emigrants, followed by a comparison between categories. Again the category with the highest proportion of migrants (43.6 per cent) was the 15 to 29 years group. However, there were also substantial proportions in the other categories, with all reaching at least 31.8 per cent. In summary, the young were particularly affected, with significant migration in every age group. This depopulation had severe implications. Once rural populations fell below certain thresholds, they often lost the necessary critical mass to retain residents and to attract new ones—so called ‘neo-rurals’—into rural towns and surrounding regions. 47 For many decades, governments of advanced industrial countries recognised the need to maintain ‘lights in [rural] windows’. 48 In 1920, the Select Committee on Agricultural Industry told the NSW Legislative Assembly, ‘The best crop on our farms is the annual crop of babies’. 49 To a considerable extent, the failure of this demographic harvest was a consequence of the young people’s belief that agriculture could provide neither stable employment with sufficient income nor a desirable lifestyle. Those migrating were typically young people in the prime child-bearing years of their lives. As a result, rural birth rates in Australia tended to be lower than average and rural towns lost countless well educated people of working 47 J. Corcoran, A. Faggian, and P. McCann, ‘Human Capital in Remote and Rural Australia: The Role of Graduate Migration’, Growth and Change , 41 (2010), pp. 192 –220 (p. 196). 48 M. Shucksmith and K. Ronningen, ‘The Uplands after Neoliberalism? The Role of the Small Farm in Rural Sustainability’, Journal of Rural Studies , 27 (2011), pp. 275 –87 (p. 275). 49 As cited in G. Davison, ‘Rural Sustainability in Historical Perspective’, in C. Cocklin and J. Dibden (eds), Sustainability and Change in Rural Australia (Sydney, 2004), pp. 38 –55 (p. 48). 64 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 65 Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947 Table 2 Proportion of each age group that migrated from the Lachlan between 1933 and 1947 (1947 age groups) Age group 15 –29 30 –44 45 –60 60 –74 75+ Proportion migrating (%) 43.6 37.4 34.7 31.8 33.9 Source : Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1933; Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1947. age. 50 The demographic trends observed in the Lachlan during the 1940s followed this pattern. The reasons for the departure of young rural people can be found in the cultural sphere as much as in the economic, and their impacts can be traced back further than the 1950s. 51 All too often, these economic and cultural spheres inter-connected with and reverberated on each other. The experiences of drought, joblessness and poverty have long driven young people off the land, but so too have the seductive images of urban consumerism; the hive of city activity, bright lights and shop windows. They feel marginalised from popularised socio- cultural imaginations of what an exciting and fulfilling life ‘ should be like’. 52 Young people may well be averse to the expectation of their inheriting and continuing the farms. 53 They often regard rural localities as ones which offer not only weaker job prospects, but also as places where there is ‘nothing to do, no places to go’, and the latter extends to perceptions of comparatively fewer prospects for children to socialise effectively. 54 Young farm workers are often restless because of their tendency to earn wages below the national average, and because of feelings, both real and imagined, about the caricaturing of their positions in the labour market and in the broader community. 55 The temptation to depart rural life is experienced as commonly among women as it is among men. Women often feel marginalised due to men’s control of capital, especially land—in Australia they are bequeathed only 5 per cent of farms—and the male dominion over religious, social, cultural and leisure activities of everyday life. 56 Rural women have a 50 Corcoran, Faggian and McCann, Human capital in remote and rural Australia’, p. 196. 51 H. Rau, ‘“Environmental Arguing at a Crossroads”: Cultural Diversity in Irish Transport Planning’, in R. Edmonson and H. Rau (eds), Environmental Argument and Cultural Difference: Locations, Fractures and Deliberations (Bern, 2008), pp. 95 –124 (p. 101). 52 P. Cloke et al., ‘Deprivation, Poverty and Marginalisation in rural lifestyles in England and Wales’, Journal of Rural Studies , 11 (1995), pp. 351 –65 (p. 364). 53 M. Alston, ‘Who is Down on the Farm? Social Aspects of Australian Agriculture in the Twenty-First Century’, Agriculture and Human Values , 21 (2004), pp. 37 –46 (p. 41). 54 M. Kloep et al., ‘Peripheral Visions? A Cross Cultural Study of Rural Youths’ Views on Migration’, Children’s Geographies , 1 (2003), pp. 91 –109 (p. 92, p. 99, and p. 102). 55 R. Tierney, ‘The Central West’ in J. Hagan (ed.), People and Politics in Regional New South Wales, Vol. 2 (Annandale, 2006), pp. 173-209 (pp. 174 –175); H. Newby, The Deferential Worker: A Study of Farm Workers in East Anglia (London, 1977), p. 11. 56 M. Alston, ‘There Are Just No Women Out There: How the Industry Justifies the Exclusion of Women from Agricultural Leadership’, Rural Society , 8 (1998), pp. 197 –208 (p. 198); M. Alston, Women on the Land: The Hidden Heart of Rural Australia (Kensington, 1995), p. 7; K. Dempsey, A Man’s Town: Inequality between Women and Men in Rural Australia (Melbourne, 1992), pp. 39 –50. 65 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 66 Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton weaker capacity to engage in self-fulfilling activities, such as sport and leisure. 57 This has often been a factor in their temptation to depart rural environments. 58 Many women have long felt attracted to the metropolis and provincial centres because of their willingness, even back in the first half of the previous century, to question and contest deep-seated patriarchal, agrarian ideas of female work being confined to home and hearth. 59 Young people of both sexes often regard country life as unchanging and as hostile to behaviours which attempt to transcend traditional conservative rural beliefs. 60 In contrast, elderly farmers have spent most, if not all, of their lives working on agricultural and/or pastoral properties, owned by their families for generations. These are people who ‘age in place’. 61 While social capital provides comfort to elderly people, this has rarely extended to those people experiencing physical and/or psychological problems or to those who feel secluded due to droughts, long-term unemployment and under- employment, and poverty. 62 Nor has social capital been adequate enough to provide contentment to residents in areas typified by great distances between properties. For such people, there has long been a higher likelihood of declining psychological and physical health, especially among older farmers and agricultural labourers. 63 Often these are men who are generally less inclined to seek counselling, who possess no confidant because of their perception that emotional fragility is a form of weakness or even of insanity, and who hold too firmly to ideals of self-reliance. 64 Although it is beyond the scope of the current article, ageing in the Lachlan seems worthy of further study. Suffice it to say here that the joint problems of the disappearance of the young, and the old being fixed in place, may be a function of remoteness. This is revealed by re-focusing within the Lachlan region itself and examining the more remote, Lower Lachlan (Table 3). In proportionate terms, the reduction in the population was lower in every age group in the Upper Lachlan than in the valley’s drier lower reaches, and the skewed nature of this reduction towards the younger age groups was clearly stronger in the more remote areas. The reduction between 1933 and 1947 of 50.5 per cent in the 15-29 years age group in the Lower Lachlan constituted substantial change. The following 57 K. James, ‘Work leisure and choice’, in K. James (ed.), Women in Rural Australia (St Lucia, 1989), pp. 67 –81 (p. 78). 58 Kloep et al., ‘Peripheral Visions?’, pp. 98 –99. 59 R. Loewen, Diaspora in the Countryside: Two Mennonite Communities and Mid-Twentieth Century Disjuncture (Toronto, 2006), p. 137. 60 Kloep et al., ‘Peripheral Visions?’, p. 103. 61 A.E. Joseph and A.I. Chalmers, ‘Growing Old in Place: A View from Rural New Zealand’, Health and Place , 1 (1995), pp. 79 –90. 62 R. Winterburton and R. Warburton, ‘Does Place Matter? Reviewing the Experience of Disadvantage for Older People in Rural Australia ’, Rural Society ,20 (2011), pp. 187 –197 ; M. Alston, ‘Social Capital in Rural Australia’, Rural Society, 12 (2002), pp. 93 –104. 63 C. Fraser et al., ‘Does One Size Really fit all? Why the Mental Health of Rural Australians Requires Further Research’, Australian Journal of Rural Health, 10 (6) (2002), pp. 298 –305. 64 S. Davis and H. Bartlett, ‘Healthy Ageing in rural Australia: Issues and Challenges’, Australasian Journal of Ageing , 27 (2008), pp. 56 –60; E. Miller, E. Buys and K. Roberto, ‘Feeling Blue: The Importance of a Confidant for the Well-Being of older Rural Married Australian and American Men’, Ageing International , 31 (2006), pp. 283 –295. 66 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 67 Population Decline in the Lachlan Region of New South Wales, 1920 –1947 Table 3 A comparison between the Upper and Lower Lachlan showing impact of remoteness Upper Lachlan Lower Lachlan Age group 15 –29 30 –44 45 –60 60+ 15 –29 30 –44 45 –60 60+ 1933 13072 9673 7331 4913 5259 3731 2333 1442 1947 9755 9037 6680 5393 2604 2392 1973 1274 % Reduction 25.4 6.6 8.9 –9.8 50.5 35.9 15.4 11.7 Source : Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1933; Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1947. excerpt from a newspaper article, published in 1941, illustrated this phenomenon clearly in one of the small towns of the Lower Lachlan: The older men—the farmers—said that it was impossible to secure any farm labour: the young men had drifted away to any other occupation they could find. At Monia Gap, 20 middle-aged men came to meet the [State] Minister [of Lands] in the deserted shelter room of the district tennis courts, long since covered with rank weeds. Ten years ago, they said, 50 or 60 men played there every weekend. Now they were never used. 65 Overall the census data reveal that the population of the Lachlan was sustained, and perhaps increased, until around the time of the 1933 census. This was a regional population now under extreme economic pressure, but with little alternative but to remain in situ . It was not until the war industries appeared from the early 1940s that opportunities arose for migration from the Lachlan region. Thereupon, the pressure was released, resulting in a wholesale exodus, particularly of younger workers. Conclusions Our results show that by 1947, the Lachlan region of NSW had become a region of declining population. The findings demonstrate that emigration tended to be concentrated in the younger working-age categories. These were transformational changes that occurred later in the Lachlan than elsewhere in rural Australia, and were concentrated over a few years during the 1940s. The result was a dramatic fall in population, corresponding with greater ‘ageing in place’. The consequences were observed in terms of the disappearance of many small rural communities and of the general weakening of social and economic circumstances, particularly in the more remote locations. Underpinning our investigation were four questions: Was the decline in population more severe in the Lachlan than other regions? When did the decline in population commence? What were the principal causes? Were young people particularly affected? We 65 ‘Young farmers lost, drift from land in South-west, Minster’s tour ends’, Sydney Morning Herald , 5 March 1941, p. 12. 67 LPS Autumn 2015 Text:LPS 03/12/2015 12:02 Page 68 Robert Tierney and Kevin Parton found that the decline in population was more pronounced in the Lachlan than in the other wheat-sheep belt regions and in the State generally, and that this decline commenced in the late 1930s, and was probably more pronounced in the early 1940s. Moreover, the causes in descending order of significance were: a delayed response to the Depression, the effects of the Second World War in widening the horizons, particularly of young people, and technological change in agriculture and droughts. Young workers constituted a larger than proportionate share of the out-migration. As with all research, some questions remain unanswered, but are worthy of further investigation. One issue relates to additional study of the problems of aging in rural and regional communities. How did older residents in remote areas maintain their social networks and are there lessons here for sustaining such networks today? Also of relevance to the sustainability of rural communities is the question of why have some communities prospered since the 1940s while others have not. Since 1940, small towns of the Lachlan have had remarkably varied fortunes. A few have continued to thrive, but many are now small villages. To these, one could add at least a dozen villages that seemed viable in 1940, but which have almost dwindled to nothing. Clearly, there are divergent natural, physical, economic, social and cultural forces at work in different locations. Previous analysis has tended to emphasise the natural and physical resources to the detriment of the economic, social and cultural aspects. Correcting this imbalance may improve our understanding, and thereby assist in retaining a critical population size to help overcome decline in rural communities. Small rural towns need to be places that are economically, socially and culturally vibrant, where youth can find more fulfilling lives. Acknowledgement We would like to acknowledge the comments received from Catherine Gulliver and Donna Read, together with the reviewers on the Editorial Board of Local Population Studies . We are also grateful for the assistance of Deanna Duffy with the map in Figure 1. 68