about Droughts in Australia
Trying to get a perspective through definitions, facts, and Australian history
Trying to get a perspective through definitions, facts, and Australian history
Definition, and Droughts through the Australian History via the Literature
Defining Droughts in Australia
As per the Federation Drought article on the Australia National Museum website:
Australia is the driest inhabited continent, a place where periods of low rainfall lasting up to a decade or more are commonplace. The Bureau of Meteorology defines 'drought' as 'a prolonged, abnormally dry period when the amount of available water is insufficient to meet our normal use'.
access the Australia National Museum website
As per the Federation Drought article on the Australia National Museum website:
Australia is the driest inhabited continent, a place where periods of low rainfall lasting up to a decade or more are commonplace. The Bureau of Meteorology defines 'drought' as 'a prolonged, abnormally dry period when the amount of available water is insufficient to meet our normal use'.
access the Australia National Museum website
The most severe droughts
- 1864 - 66 (and 1868)
- 1880 - 86
- 1888
- 1895 - 1903 known as the Federation drought
- 1911 - 16
- 1918 - 20
- 1939 - 45
- 1958 - 68 most widespread and probably second to the Federation drought in severity
- 1982 - 83
The most severe droughts up to 1988 are listed in an article of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It also includes some interesting definitions too.
access the article on the ABS website
access a local copy of ABS 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 1988
Australian Poems and Other Literature works written on Australian droughts:
Some further thoughts
- The ABS article concludes:
Droughts will continue to be a prominent feature of the Australian scene.
Improved meteorological drought watch services and hopefully an improved ability to forecast
droughts through local research and participation in the WCP will help to mitigate their adverse
impacts. The nature of drought, however, and the way in which the community should deal with it
are complex issues incorporating significant variables in fields such as hydrology, agriculture,
economics and sociology, as well as in the political realities of the day.
- About the political realities of the day...
It's grand to be a democrat And toady to the mob,
For fear that if you told the truth They'd hunt you from your job.
Source: It's Grand poem written in 1902 by Banjo Paterson
- About the cycles of droughts and floods:
"If rain don't come this month," said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak--
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"If rain don't come this week."
[...]
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"If this rain doesn't stop."
[...]
"There'll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."
Source: Said Hanrahan poem written in 1919 by John O'Brien
In our experience...
- The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) above definition of drought leads to the ever re-defining our normal use as the Australian population and its needs keep on increasing as well as wastage of food and water.
Assuming that a 'sufficient' level of rainwater could be measured for the entirety of Australia for a given population and primary use needs, and let's call it SQR0 (for Sufficient Quantity of Rain at time 0). As the population grows over time and the needs grow, SQR0 would no longer be deemed 'sufficient'.
Are we expecting the rain to increase as the population grows??
Or... are we saying that seasons which are deemed 'normal' as at 2021 will be classified as droughts just because this definition of a drought is based on satisfying the ever growing needs of an ever growing population?
So the story goes as: Once upon a time, the rain events were the same but the population kept growing. The politicians and the media called this 'drought'. The kids became alarmed but they were never told it was not a rain change, but a demographics and economics change.
I question the adequacy of this definition of drought. And I am concerned that policies would be based on such a definition. - There have been other droughts since 1988. Since 1991 in Australia, and 1998 on the land in Australia, I recall the 2002-2006 dry times (depending where you lived. At the time we experienced it in Victoria in 2002-03 then NSW), and the 2017-2019 drought which deeply hurt Eastern Australia together with heavy Bush Fires and heavy smoke.