Sir Walter Murdoch Memorial Lecture (1975) Science in the Development of Western Australia: The Richest Harvest Lecture delivered by: Professor E.J. Underwood Professor of History, Australian National University I deeply appreciate the honour of giving the second Walter Murdoch Lecture. This appreciation stems firstly from the fact that I knew Walter Murdoch well, first when I was an undergraduate, then as a fellow-member of the staff of the University of Western Australia and later, after his retirement, as a friend of him and his wife and of his children and his grand-children. A second reason for appreciation of the invitation to give this lecture is that it gives me the opportunity to desert, for a brief while, the narrower field of science which has so filled my time and thoughts over the last year or so and to allow my vision to range over wider perspectives. Of course, I cannot hope to do this with the wit and wisdom and perceptivity that characterised Walter Murdoch's writings, but I hope to tell a story which will arouse some pride in the past of our great State of Western Australia and stimulate some worthwhile thoughts about its future. May I say at the outset that I was tempted to tackle an even broader and more demanding topic; to speak on the rising tide of inequalities between nations of the western world and the third world, of the growing pressures of population growth on world food supplies, or of the rape of the earth's finite resources of minerals and fossil fuels. No thinking person can deny that these are problems of overwhelming importance to the future of mankind and are therefore worthy of consideration for a lecture such as this. However, I have spoken on these topics many times and decided against them partly because of a feeling that, as T. S. Eliot once wrote, ‘it is no longer possible to find consolation in prophetic gloom.’ I was also influenced by the fact that Walter Murdoch was a distinguished West Australian by adoption. Furthermore I have lived and worked most of my life in this State, so at the risk of accusations of parochialism, I decided to tackle a more local subject - hence the title of this lecture, ‘A Rich Harvest: Science in the Development of Western Australia.’ 1 The Nineteenth Century and Gold For the first 70 years following the founding of the Swan River Colony in 1829 agricultural production barely kept pace with the modest requirements of the small population. This is understandable because the early settlers were faced with an environment which was always alien and generally harsh. The soils were mostly poor, the summers were long, hot and dry and there were few permanent fresh water streams. The crop varieties they brought with them were mostly ill-adapted to such an environment and there was no background of local experience upon which to draw and no scientific services upon which to lean. In these circumstances farming was confined to the few river valleys and better soils and the beginnings of a pastoral industry were undertaken by a few intrepid souls who moved further afield with their flocks and settled on huge holdings of sparse natural grazings. This was the position until the great gold discoveries at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie came in the 1890's and the first big impetus to the development of Western Australia emerged. The State’s population rose spectacularly from a mere 50,000 in 1890 to 184,000 in 1900. A substantial home market with high prices for the products of the land immediately arose and for the first time essential capital for development became available. A unique feature of this early phase of development, never to be repeated, was its minute scientific, technical and engineering requirements. The exploitation of the gold resources of the area in its early days demanded only the most elementary technical knowledge, no expensive equipment and no complicated chemical or engineering processes. The lure of easy riches provided the economic stimulus and human cupidity supported men and women through incredible hardships and indignities. All went well until the ‘easy’ gold ran out and it became obvious that gold mining from then on must become an industry requiring machinery, capital and ore- processing know-how. Within 10 years from the first great discoveries, that is by the end of the nineteenth century, goldmining in Western Australia declined to a fraction of its former size and thousands of men either left the State or, more importantly, sought other forms of employment. This included farming, as we shall see! However, this was by no means the end of the goldmining industry. The challenge of obtaining gold from ore-bodies of ever-increasing depths and ever- decreasing grades was met by mining companies supported by overseas capital and management and by the application of the latest scientific techniques. Gold was to remain a major source of export income to Western Australia and a major factor in its development for a further half-century. This fact is often overlooked and has become overshadowed by the spectacular mining developments with iron ore, bauxite, nickel and ilmenite of the 1960's and of today. Of this, I will speak later. 2 The Development of the Wheat and the Dairy Belts Early in this century the first great wave of agricultural development in Western Australia began. This was the opening up of the wheatbelt. Two sets of factors were responsible-one socioeconomic and the other scientific or technical. The principal socio-economic factors were firstly the availability of large numbers of men with the physical vigour, courage and ingenuity displaced from the Goldfields and secondly a remarkably generous Government policy of providing loans for land purchase, clearing, fencing, water supplies and the like. But it was the advent of scientific knowledge and techniques for handling the formidable environment of the wheatbelt that enabled the pioneer farmers to take advantage of these economic stimuli. Let us enumerate some of these vital technical advances. In the first place superphosphate, itself a product of scientific research and chemical industry initially in England, became available and was so successful in raising cereal crop yields that it became known as the ‘magic dust’. Secondly, Australian wheat breeders led by the great William Farrer and followed by the late Dr. George Sutton in this State, who was one of Farrer's pupils, produced a series of new wheat varieties better adapted to Australian and Western Australian wheat-belt conditions. Thirdly, the so-called ‘dry-farming’ techniques were evolved from the experiments of agricultural scientists of the State Department of Agriculture on their field stations, among which bare fallow became the cornerstone of successful cereal growing. So successful were these measures that wheat production in this State rose from 2 million bushels in 1905 to 53 million bushels in 1930-31. Of course, the State’s wheat yield has since been several times more than double this amount, for reasons which will become apparent later in this address. The factors responsible for the development of the dairy-belt in the south-west corner of the State in the years following the first World War bear a certain resemblance to those of the wheatbelt. A similar combination of socio-economic and of technical factors operated. Large numbers of returned soldiers and of English migrants, willing to try farming as a way of life, became available and a bold Government migration policy and land settlement scheme provided the initial land, stock and finance that was necessary. On the technical side, the extraordinary suitability of subterranean clover to the environment and its capacity to produce luxuriant pastures when treated liberally with superphosphate were discovered and techniques of pasture production and management were developed. For some years the wheat and dairy belts prospered, despite many personal hardships and tragedies, until the great depression of the early 1930's with its world-wide catastrophic decline in prices. The story of this period has been well told by Geoffrey Bolton in his book 3 ‘A Fine Country to Starve In’. But the farmers at this time had still other problems to contend with. A serious disease of cattle, with high mortality, became manifest in the Group Settlement areas near Denmark on the south coast and a devastating disease of sheep, known as toxic paralysis or botulism, arose in the 1930’s in the wheat-sheep areas. I had the privilege of being actively associated with the scientific research leading to the understanding and practical prevention of both these problems, with great benefit to the productivity of large areas of farmland. Denmark wasting disease was shown to be due to a soil and pasture deficiency of minute amounts of the trace element, cobalt. The story of this discovery has been told by me elsewhere. It represented the beginnings of the trace element era which was to yield such rich dividends in this and many other countries of the world in the following decades. The toxic paralysis problem was found to be due to the development of a depraved appetite or pica in sheep in the affected areas which impelled them to consume rabbits and other carrion infected with the toxin of Clostridium botulinum. This disease could be completely prevented either by improving the sheep's diet to the point where they no longer displayed pica or, more economically, by periodic treatment with a suitable vaccine, so that the botulinus toxin no longer exerted its toxic effects. The Light Land Revolution The next great step forward in the development of Western Australia began at the end of World War II.