University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 1986 DROUGHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA REDUCING THE LOSSES BUT NOT REMOVING THE HAZARD R. L. Heathcote Flinders University of South Australia Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Heathcote, R. L., "DROUGHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA REDUCING THE LOSSES BUT NOT REMOVING THE HAZARD" (1986). Great Plains Quarterly. 979. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/979 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. DROUGHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA REDUCING THE LOSSES BUT NOT REMOVING THE HAZARD R. L. HEATHCOTE In Australia technology has reduced but not eliminated the impact of drought and seems set DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA: CHRONOLOGIES AND IMPACTS to do the same for the foreseeable CO2-in­ duced climate change. To document this Periods of unseasonally low rainfall caused claim, I wish here to consider first a brief considerable distress to the Australian aborig­ history of drought in Australia-pointing up ines prior to European settlement, and it is some parallels and contrasts with the North possible to provide a reasonably precise chron­ American experience; second, to outline the ology of droughts in Australia from the mid­ various strategies (technological and nontech­ nineteenth century onward (Foley 1957; Gibbs nological) that have been adopted to try to and Maher 1967). The high variability of the mitigate drought; third, to review the current Australian rainfall and the frequency with thinking on the effect of increasing levels of which annual totals fall below the average has atmospheric CO2 on the Australian climate had significant impact upon the pastoral and and their releva9ce to agricultural and pastoral agricultural activities in Australia. activities through possible modification of the Droughts retarded land settlement in three incidence and intensity of drought; and finally periods. After a decade of relatively good to evaluate the history of technological adjust­ rainfalls and settlement expansion in the ments to drought stresses and to try to forecast 1870s, South Australia and to a lesser extent the success or failure of such adjustments to New South Wales and Victoria suffered foreseeable climate change. droughts in the 1880s (Meinig 1962). A further widespread drought at the turn of the century A native of England, R. L. Heathcote is reader in affected the main pastoral areas of New South geography at the Flinders University of South Wales and Queensland, and the combination Australia. He is the author of Australia (1975), of economic depression and drought in the The Arid Lands (1985), and editor of Percep­ 1930s and early 1940s forced considerable tions of Desertification (1980). restructuring of the southwestern and south­ eastern Australia cereal producing areas (Proc­ [GPQ 6 (Summer 1986): 225-237.) tor 1940). 225 226 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1986 The worst droughts in Australia have economic impacts that the technological de­ brought about losses to pastoralists and farm­ fenses have mainly been marshaled. ers. (Bates 1976; Lovett 1973; Scott 1983; Waring 1976). In fact, the economic losses TECHNOLOGICAL DEFENSES AGAINST from drought make it the most expensive DROUGHT IMPACTS natural hazard facing Australia. Although no one has been killed, the economic cost from In the North American Great Plains and in 1945 to 1975 averaged over $100 million a Australia the patterns and processes of land year, roughly four times the cost of any other settlement, along with innovative technologies hazard (Heathcote 1979, Table 1.3). to reduce the production costs of land clear­ The 1982-83 drought shows not only the ance, tillage, harvesting and communications, continuing significance of the economic losses have been remarkably similar since the mid­ but the variety of ways in which they are made nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, there­ manifest (table 1). Hidden behind this array of fore, the social and technological responses to national impacts are the regional, community, drought have also been similar. and personal hardships that no official statis­ Whether the Australians have ever fully tics can adequately measure, but that occa­ accepted drought as endemic to the continent sionally come to light through journalistic is debatable (Heathcote 1969), but there is no activity (see, for instance, "Special Report: doubt that as settlement spread down the Australia's 'Great Dry'," Time, 28 March rainfall gradient into the interior, settlers 1983). That droughts in Australia have had evolved pragmatic, often technologically and continue to have other significant impacts based, strategies to cope with agricultural we shall see later, but it has been toward these drought. TABLE 1 THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE 1982-83 DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA 1. 67% of the national pastoral and agricultural properties were officially recognized to be drought affected (67,000 properties). 2. Wheat crop failures led to an average 45% decrease in the quantity of wheat sold per farm, and wheat receipts per farm declined 58%. 3. The 1982-83 wheat harvest (7.8 M tonnes) was 47.6% of the 1981-82 harvest, and average yield (0.76 tonnes per hectare) was down 40% from the previous five year average. 4. National employment reduced by 2% (100,000 persons). 5. Overall rural output declined by 18% leading to a 1.1 % decline in national output. 6. 1982-83 decrease in industrial production: Chemical fertilizer production 11% Flour and cereal production 10% Railway transport receipts 6% 7. Disaster relief paid by Commonwealth and state governments: 1980-81 loans $ 60 million 1982-83 loans $120 million 1982 freight subsidy $ 47 million 1982 fodder subsidy $100 million SOURCES: Campbell, et al. 1983, and estimates by Commonwealth Bureau of Agricultural Economics DROUQHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA 227 Pastoral strategies. Conscious spatial diversi­ Machinery to harvest drought-stunted crops­ fication of their properties reduced the notably Ridley's "Stripper" of 1843-was drought losses of pastoralists like Sidney developed also in South Australia before Kidman (1857-1935), James Tyson becoming available in Victoria and New South (1819-1898), and others with similar capital Wales. South Australian farmers also were and ingenuity. But for the majority-the experimenting with drought-resistant wheat smaller capitalists-the strategies were limited varieties (Williams 1974) before William J. to increasing surface water storage by dams Farrer began to cross drought-resistant Indian and tanks and then, when oil-drilling technol­ wheats with good quality Canadian baking ogy became available from the United States wheats and with the well-established, high­ in the 1870s and 1880s, to seeking for water yielding but vulnerable Purple Straw wheats. deeper down: "If the Lord won't send us water, The results, especially "Federation," produced oh, we'll get it from the devil; Yes, we'll get it during the last years of the 1895-1902 drought, from the devil deeper down" (A. B. Paterson, were to push the wheat fields further down the "Song of the Artesian Water," quoted in rainfall gradient over the next 25 years (Wrig­ Lovett 1973, 193). ley 1981). Fencing of the range from the 1870s The apparent success of highly mechanized onward helped some to rotate the stock broad acre grain farming using scientifically grazing pressure, but droughts always forced applied fertilizers and legume pastures in the stock back upon the few permanent watering semiarid portions of South Australia from the points from where the feed had been long 1950s onward led to the formation of a gone. Evacuation of stock to rented drought­ specialized agency in the 1970s (SAGRIC free pastures or (illegally) to the public travel­ International Pty. Ltd.). It has been invited to ing stock reserves depended upon their com­ develop dry farming systems in north Africa mercial value; often it was cheaper to let and southwest Asia (SAGRIC n.d.). The animals take their chance in the drought­ emphasis is upon adapting successful technolo­ ridden home paddocks. gies developed in South Australia to areas of Storage of drought fodder has rarely been similar climate around the world. Although a economically viable except on mixed crop and water management strategy to conserve all the livestock enterprises and even then only for a rainfall on farm and spread it evenly over the small core of breeding stock (Dillon and Lloyd land surface had been developed privately in 1962; Powell 1963). Breeding of drought­ New South Wales in the late 1940s (Yeomans tolerant livestock has been generally limited to 1954) and had received strong support from cattle, using Indian Zebu and Texan Santa the professor of geography at Sydney Universi­ Gertrudis lines to cross with traditional British ty (Macdonald Holmes 1960), it appears to beef breeds for the northern tropical ranges. In have been forgotten in favor of simple contour some cases, as with the "Droughtmaster" line, banks for soil conservation. the goal is obvious. On the Australian farms, however, when the crop starts to wilt there is nothing really to Dry farming strategies. For the farmers the be done if irrigation is impossible. And when march out into the droughty plains has been the crop has died and the soil begins to blow hard-fought. The optimal time for seeding was there is only emergency tillage to stave off learned by trial and error; fallowing of land to disaster, and that only as long as the subsoil is save moisture from one season to the next moist enough to hold the clods together. began privately in South Australia in the 1880s before the technique received the bles­ Irrigated farming. Irrigation is not the tech­ sing that followed official contacts with the nological solution to drought stress in Austra­ Campbell system of the Great Plains in 1906.