Documentary Records Theme

Claire Fenby & Don Garden

SEARCH final project meeting

2 August 2012

Southerly Buster by Frederick Garling, ca. 1850, DG V1A/29, SLNSW.

George William Evans, View of part of Hawkesbury River at 1st fall and connection with Grose River N.S. Wales, 1809, State Library of New South Wales, SV / 123.

Introduction

• How was society in south-eastern Australia affected by weather and climate between 1788 and 1860?• How did European Australians adapt to the problems posed by weather and climate during this period? • How did the impact of rainfall variation in south- eastern Australia differ between and within colonies?

Chronology of Rainfall Variations in South-Eastern Australia, 1788–1860

• Examined 12 sources to trace periods of below-average rainfall in south-eastern Australia between 1788–1860; only one source contained adequate information about above-average rainfall.

• This chronology forms the backbone of the thesis - identifying climate extremes that may have impacted societies in colonial Australia.

• Distils and quantifies information from documentary sources. This allows for easier comparison to observational data and palaeoclimate reconstructions of rainfall, temperature and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Augustus Earle, View of the farm of J. Hassel [Hassell] Esqr. Cow Pastures, 1825–1825, State Library of New South Wales, a223002

Case Study 1: New South Wales, 1788–1815

• Persistent hope that floods were an aberration, an unlucky act of ‘Providence’.

• The settlers’ need for a self-sustained agricultural industry and unwillingness to accept the true nature of the Australian climate prevented the colony learning from and adapting to climatic challenges during the early years of settlement.

• Financial and social factors ensured that the new settlers reacted rather than adapted to major climate events like flood.

Sketch of the Inundation in the Neighbourhood of Windsor taken on Sunday the 2nd of June 1816, SLNSW, a1539004

• Despite poor understanding of drought, intermittent periods of drought between 1788 and 1815 encouraged major changes in the expansion of settlement in New South Wales, changing the face of the colony.

Case Study 1: New South Wales, 1788–1815

• While drought irrevocably shaped settlement in south-eastern Australia, settlers’ cultural practices did not change profoundly. The effects of drought were mitigated by settlement expansion but traditional European agricultural and pastoral methods were still imposed on the landscape despite the possibility of future drought.

Edward Dayes, Eastern View of Sydney,1797, NLA, nla.pic-an2716973-1

Case Study 2: New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, 1824–1835

• It is apparent that long-term adaptation to Australian climate variation was not a large concern at this time.

• The 1824–1835 period was predominantly a learning phase

during which settlers in Australia drew on forty years of first-hand experience of the climate in order to understand what climate may be like in the future.

• Explorers were charged with not only discovering the natural features of the landscape but with understanding regional climate variations as well.

• While some settlers began to identify climatic patterns

many were still describing climate extremes like drought or flood as acts of God rather than a condition to be planned for or mitigated.

Joseph Lycett, View on the Macquarie River, Van Diemen’s Land, near the Ford at Argyle Plains, 1825, SLNSW, a928338

Case Study 3: South-Eastern Australia, 1835–1845

• By the late 1830s, aridity and Australia’s climate extremes were better known both in Australia and overseas.

• Australians were thinking more about ways to live with both seasonal and long-term rainfall variations.

• The New South Wales government had attempted to construct a number of silo facilities to preserve surplus grain from abundant harvests for use during drought years, but the London Colonial Office, in line with their economic policies, prevented this adaptive strategy.

Cunningham, Hints for Australian Emigrants, 1841

Case Study 3: South-Eastern Australia, 1835–1845

• Irrigation methods employed in other arid regions of the world were proposed as a way to maintain European settlement in Australia and to mould the landscape and climate to British ideals.• Some regretted the predominance of European-style agriculture and preferred crops in the Australian landscape and advocated for the widespread introduction of drought-hardy crops and animals. These adaptive strategies were discussed in news publications, journals and other published works but were only implemented on a small scale.• Unfortunately, while the experience of drought and climate variations were more widely discussed and better understood by settlers from Europe, the impact of climate on disenfranchised indigenous people was largely unreported. Colonisers survived periods of drought by annexing well-watered areas, further marginalising Aboriginal people.

Peacock, View of old Government House, 1845, SLNSW, a128029.

Waterloo Creek Massacre, Liverpool Plains, NSW, 1838, Australian War Memorial

Case Study 4: Victoria, 1849–1855

Edgar Ray and Frederick Sinnet, 1855, SLV, MP00/0056/82

• The Black Thursday bushfires were not preceded by long-term severe drought.

• High rainfall in 1849 and months of average and above-average rainfall in 1850 were followed by low summer rainfall in 1851.

• High temperatures exacerbated the effects of low rainfall in summer 1850–1851, desiccating the plant growth and creating the perfect conditions for catastrophic bushfire. • Mild weather and an absence of long-term drought in the early 1850s ensured the success of the gold rush.

• The influx of gold rush immigrants also meant that lessons about Australian weather and climate remained misunderstood in Victoria.

William Strutt, Black Thursday, SLV

• Society in south-eastern Australia was often adversely affected by weather and climate between 1788 and 1860.

• Surprisingly, severe consequences of climate extremes—food shortages, water shortages, crop and stock loss, and the loss of human life—did not always teach settlers valuable lessons about the impact that south-eastern Australian climate could have on fledgling colonies.

• During the early years of European settlement in Australia, settlers were blinded by an optimistic attitude towards climate. Many had hoped that the occurrence of drought and flood was an unlucky incident, unlikely to be soon repeated.

• However, after experiencing the 1837–1839 drought, settlers finally realised that periods of below-average rainfall were a permanent feature of life in New South Wales.

• Despite this, the short length of European settlement in other south-eastern Australian colonies meant that settlers were still unfamiliar with the cycles of drought and good rainfall in these regions. As such, some stated confidently that these regions were exempt from severe droughts.

Conclusions