Hand feeding stock during the drought on ‘Pinewood’, Deniliquin, about 1938. Photos courtesy of the NSW State Library
This is the fourth in a series of monthly columns written by Alan Henderson about Deniliquin district historical events and issues. Alan’s grandfather purchased ‘Warragoon’ on the Finley Road in 1912. Alan was born in the Deniliquin Hospital in 1944 but moved to Canberra in 1967. In retirement he has written a family history, Boots, Gold and Wool, and will share some of his research in this local history column.
Deniliquin was one of 33 locations in a table beside the first weather map published in an Australian newspaper — the Sydney Morning Herald — on February 5, 1877.
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Many of the earliest weather stations have closed, so Deniliquin now occupies a distinctive status among the hundreds of stations that continue to be recorded on the Bureau of Meteorology website.
At more than 160 years, Deniliquin is the oldest station reporting rainfall data daily, and the fourth oldest among stations reporting monthly.
The long series of data for Deniliquin enables us to assess, for example, the increased frequency of days of extreme heat, and also to identify the most severe droughts in the period since European settlers arrived.
I recall mentioning global warming to my eldest sibling, Noelle Browne and she said, ‘‘Oh, Al, there were lots of hot days when I was young’’.
It is possible 1930 was seared into her one-year-old brain, because there were 42 days exceeding 35°C that year.
I have calculated the average number of ‘hot days’ above two thresholds — 35°C and 40°C — for two 10-year periods: 1929-1938, the first decade of Noelle’s life, and 2011- 2020.
In the 10 years to 1939, the annual average number of days above 35°C was 25, and in the 10 years to 2020 it was 38 days.
In the 10 years to 1939 the annual average number of days above 40°C was 3.5, and in the 10 years to 2020 it was 9.2 days.
The most extreme year was 2019 — the temperature exceeded 35°C on 57 days, and exceeded 40°C on 22 days.
The most widespread, serious Australian droughts since European settlement have been the Federation drought (1895-1903), the World War II drought (1939-45), and the Millennium drought (1997-2009), the latter being the most serious.
In the eight years between 1895-1902 of the Federation drought, rainfall in Deniliquin averaged 320mm compared with the long-term (1858-2020) average of 407mm.
National sheep numbers which had reached more than 100 million were reduced by about half and cattle numbers by more than 40 per cent.
Substantial numbers of Deniliquin district stock were transported south to Gippsland or east to the highlands of NSW.
The Edward River was reduced to a chain of ponds. On November 12, 1902, with the temperature at 37.5°C, a dust storm became so dense for about half an hour from 6pm that Deniliquin experienced ‘total darkness’.
The World War II drought was less severe and shorter.
In the five years from 1940-45, rainfall averaged 339mm. Moreover, there was scope to mitigate the impact of drought in some areas of the district because the Hume Weir had been completed in 1936, Stevens Weir had been completed in 1935, followed by the establishment of the Wakool Irrigation District, and by late 1940 the Mulwala Canal was very close to Deniliquin.
My father was irrigating from the Mulwala Canal at Blighty by September 1940.
His diaries indicate that within a couple years, stock were being rotated through an oasis of lucerne and other irrigated pastures.
By way of contrast, in 1938, a very dry year, the typical first task of the day changed from ‘riding around all the sheep’ to ‘feeding all the sheep’, spending over $100,000 in current prices on off-farm fodder, including barley, Thorpes sheep nuts, Riverina nuts and mangels (large course beet).
In Deniliquin, the Millennium drought extended from 2001 to 2009, with average rainfall over those nine years of 320mm.
In the six decades since the onset of the World War II drought, the capacity for the irrigation system to mitigate the impact of drought for individual farmers had declined.
Greater use of water entitlements combined with more water intensive farming meant that in severe drought conditions allocations against water entitlements declined significantly.
Another thing that has changed since World War II, in this case for the better, is the accuracy of weather forecasting.
My father was a devotee of Inigo Jones (1872-1954), the renowned long-range weather forecaster.
Silence was demanded when his latest pronouncements were broadcast on the radio.
It would have distressed my father to read a biography of Jones’ professional life suggesting that he exhibited many of the hallmarks of quackery.
Drag lines excavating a section fo the Mulwala Canal near Deniliquin, in August 1939.
