Running out? An environmental history of climate and water in the southwest of Western Australia, 1829 to 2006 Ruth A. Morgan B.A., B.Ec. This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities History Discipline December 2012 Abstract Living between the desert and the sea, people in the southwest of Australia have long experienced anxieties about the ongoing availability of fresh water resources in the region. In recent years, evidence of a drying trend across the region since the mid-1970s has heightened these concerns. The conditions of the present beg for historical understanding of how and why these anxieties emerged, persisted and developed. In this thesis, I have utilised the ecological concepts of vulnerability and resilience to assess the ways in which people in the southwest have tried to come to terms with its climate and water resources since European colonisation in 1829. I examine the development of understandings of the regional climate and how these have changed over time; and how these understandings have shaped and informed water resource use and management in the southwest. I explore the ways in which approaches to water in the southwest became entangled with understandings of weather, climate and climatic variability, and were shaped by cultural, social and political contexts. I contend that the settler society in the southwest became inherently vulnerable to running out of water because its patterns of settlement and development were founded upon the Western European model of regular, reliable seasons and water supplies; a model fundamentally at odds with the environmental realities of the southwest. The region’s Nyoongar people, in contrast, had developed a way of life that was more resilient to climate variability and water scarcity because of their mobility and land use practices. Yet the forces of colonisation would wear down their resilience. I argue that the historical application of developmentalist Western science and technology to the ‘alien’ southwest environment to make it conform to Western expectations has served to reinforce and deepen the vulnerabilities of the southwest’s people to running out. These vulnerabilities are therefore largely the product of cultural phenomena. Over time, state and Commonwealth government experts in specific cultural, social and political contexts developed particular understandings of the region’s climates and water resources. These guided the design and expansion of the water supply systems for the southwest’s sanitary needs and economic development. In turn, the nature of these water supply systems and their management has shaped the approaches of urban and rural Western Australians to episodes of climate variability and water scarcity between 1829 and 2006. I chart a trajectory of approaches to water resources in the region, from a focus on health and sanitation, to the development of a profligate water culture, and later, to a more conservation-oriented outlook, and examine how climate variability, dryland salinity, technical networks, and economic rationalism have shaped these perspectives. In this thesis, I deploy the concept of ‘Big Water’ to study the development of this trajectory. The provision of large networks of public water supplies to suburban and rural Western Australians after the Second World War accelerated the widespread detachment of many water users from the resource itself. This detachment, combined with the easy access to water, served to propagate a fiction of endless water supplies and an expectation that demands for more water would be met. With this mindset, however, scarcity is always nigh, as an unslakable thirst fuels a feedback loop in which demand inevitably outstrips supplies, feeding further anxieties of running out, and leading to escalating demands for additional supplies. Locked in such a cycle, there will never be enough and the region’s drying climate looks set to continue to contribute to these challenges in the future. The study of the different expectations and experiences of water scarcity events, as well as the aftermath of such episodes, reveals the inequitable distributions of socioeconomic, political and geographic vulnerability in the southwest to running out of water. These inequities, I argue, have formed over time between the city of Perth and its rural hinterland, as well as between the more and less affluent members of both constituencies. They have had, and continue to have, significant consequences for the ways that water scarcity is experienced in the southwest. Revealing the roots of the region’s vulnerabilities, I contend, challenges the historic reliance on scientific and technological approaches to running out, and leads us to question the human aspects of water scarcity events in the southwest. The thesis concludes with an exploration of alternative pathways of water resource management in the southwest of Western Australia in the context of a changing regional climate. Through this analysis and investigation of the tangled climate and water histories of southwest Western Australia, this thesis builds on and contributes to the burgeoning field of Australian environmental history. 3 Contents Page Acknowledgements ii Conversion table v Introduction: 1 Water between the desert and the sea 1. Settling the Seasons: 39 European colonisation and experimentation (1829 to 1901) 2. Thirst in the Golden West: 81 Suburban and agricultural expansion (1901 to 1945) 3. A Million Acres a Year: 115 Engineering post-war prosperity (1945 to 1969) 4. The Age of Uncertainty: 148 Reaching the limits of settlement (1969 to 1983) 5. Precaution and Prediction: 205 Economic rationalism, ecologically sustainable development and environmental change (1983 to 2001) 6. Watershed: 252 Water resources in the twenty-first century (2001 to 2006) Conclusion 286 Bibliography 295 Appendices 363 Appendix I: May-October Rainfall, 1903-1945 (mm) 363 Appendix II: May-October Rainfall, 1945-1969 (mm) 364 Appendix III: May-October Rainfall, 1969-1983 (mm) 365 Appendix IV: Groundwater resources of the Swan Coastal Plain 366 Appendix V: May-October Rainfall, 1945-2001 (mm) 367 Appendix VI: May-October Rainfall, 1945-2006 (mm) 368 i Acknowledgements The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the guidance, encouragement, and support of many people. First and foremost, I am indebted to the incredible and indefatigable Andrea Gaynor, who has been committed to this project from the outset and whose support has been indispensable. I have also been privileged to work with and learn from Charlie Fox, Jenny Gregory, Geoffrey Bolton and Rob Stuart, who have always offered scholarly advice over a friendly chat. In addition to an Australian Postgraduate Award, I have also benefitted greatly from the financial assistance available from The University of Western Australia, including additional scholarship funding and awards from the Graduate Research School and the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. I am especially grateful to the families of Dr Paul Laffey and Professor Frank Broeze for supporting the endeavours of young scholars. I also thank Roy and Beatrice Little for supporting scholarship of the Great Southern Region through the Robert Stephens Bursary. During my studies, I have undertaken several fruitful trips to Canberra to undertake research and to present my work. I am thankful to the family of Norman McCann, who sponsor the National Library of Australia’s Summer Scholars Programme, as well as to Margy Burns and Jesse Adams Stein for their kind assistance. I am also indebted to the hard work of Libby Robin and Tom Griffiths for convening the Environmental History Workshop at The Australian National University and for fostering a community of environmental historians in Australia and abroad. I am grateful for the generous support of the Committee for Australian Studies at Harvard University, the Group of Eight and Alison Bashford for convening the Climate: Science + Humanities Conference at Harvard University. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Ethan Blue and Alistar Robertson for cultivating scholarly ties between The University of Western Australia and the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. This relationship has proven to be especially productive and my work has thrived from meetings with Richard White, Bill Deverall and Jon Christensen, who have shown great kindness and support for my research. My research has benefitted greatly from the friendly assistance of librarians and archivists across the country. I thank Marjorie Bly (National Archives of Australia, Perth); Michelle Dal Pozzo (Bureau of Meteorology, Perth); Steve Howell (Battye Library); Lincoln Kay (Department of Water); Tim Lethorn and Lise Summers (State ii Records Office of Western Australia); Trudy Parker (Department of Environment and Conservation); Joanna Sassoon (National Library of Australia); and Rosanne Walker (Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science). Special thanks must go to the lovely librarians of the Scholars’ Centre at the Reid Library, Azra Tulic, Susana Melo de Howard and Toby Burrows. I have been very fortunate to discuss my research with people who have played, and continue to play, significant roles in the land and water management of southwest Western Australia. Many thanks to Len Baddock, Glenn Cook, Jim Gill, Mal Lamond, Brian Sadler, David Stephens, and Walter R. Stern for giving so freely of their time, experience