Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

Along the eastern side of the continent, from twenty-five to one hundred and fifty miles back from the Pacific Coast, is the Dividing Range. These mountains separate the fertile and well-watered coast regions from the drainage basin whose waters flow westward. They also rob moisture-laden winds from the Pacific of much of their burden of water. West of the mountains vast plateaus begin and extend for two thousand miles, broken here and there by barren hills and rocky peaks. These plains lie close to or within the tropics, and all day long absorb heat which they give off by radiation at night. Ordinarily this would have the effect of drawing in a supply of moisture from the ocean, but on the Australian continent the heated interior is so immense that not enough moist air comes in to water it.

The few rivers of the country are short and mostly unnavigable. There is, in fact, only one big river system, the Murray-Darling. From its source in the Australian Alps the Murray flows between the states of New South Wales and Victoria, then crosses the southeastern corner of South Australia. It is navigable for small steamers to a distance of twelve hundred miles or more from its mouth. Of its tributaries the most important are the Darling, which crosses New South Wales to join it in the southwestern part of the state, and the Murrumbidgee. The whole system waters a big basin on the eastern side of the continent in which are some of the best sheep farms of Australia.

If you have looked at the map, you have noticed that even if Australia has but few rivers, there are a number of large lakes, especially in South Australia. But these bodies of water help matters little, for most of them are salt, and there are no fresh-water lakes to speak of on the whole continent. All the salt lakes are surrounded by flats of treacherous mud encrusted with salt. In dry years the lakes shrink; then a wet season fills them and the grass springs up all about them.

Australia is not only a land of scanty rainfall, few rivers, and great heat. It is also a land of droughts. A district that has rejoiced in sufficient rain for one or two years and piled up wealth from its crops and its flocks may have to face a year or more of dryness that shrivels up the face of the earth. One need not go far in Australia to hear of the horrors of drought. Stockmen on their stations far off in the interior sometimes go crazy because the rain fails to come, and many have lost fortunes on account of dry weather. In such times, even a man with thousands of acres and tens of thousands of sheep may have to sit helpless and watch the animals die before his eyes.

The droughts clear the land of everything green. The pastures become as bare as the roads, and the sheep stagger about, nosing in the dust for the seeds of grasses and trees. Sometimes trees are cut down to give them food. During one drought a sheep-raiser who had four thousand acres of land kept one hundred men busy cutting off the branches of his apple and other trees to feed the flocks. The sheep ate the leaves and even the twigs. This same man had another gang skinning dead sheep as fast as they died, and a third whose business it was to lift up the exhausted animals when they fell. This was to keep them from the carrion crows hovering about over them ready to peck out their eyes. During these droughts one may see the bodies of kangaroos lying here and there upon the plains. Thousands of rabbits die, and I have been told that even the birds drop dead from the trees and that their bodies line both sides of the fences.

At intervals the whole continent suffers from terrible dryness. Every state except Tasmania has its drought history. The Riverina country of New South Wales is one of the best of the sheep-raising districts. It produces some of the finest wool and is noted for its excellent grass, yet in times of severe drought it looks as though a fire had swept over it. Most of it is then as bare as a baseball diamond. There is not a green sprout or any sign of vegetable life to be seen. In one drought prevailing in parts of Queensland there were tracts strewn with dead sheep, cattle, and horses, and in some districts more than half the sheep were lost. At another time the wool clip of Australia was reduced almost twelve per cent. and the number of lambs born was cut down enormously.

Ten of the thirteen big droughts recorded since 1880 affected principally interior regions where the rainfall is normally less then twenty-five inches; but almost the whole continent suffered in the great drought of 1902-1903. Imagine what it would be like if all the United States from New York to San Francisco had no rain, and there was no green except on the mountains and in parts of New England. Then you will have some idea of conditions in Australia during this visitation.

The great drought was the culmination of five unfavourable seasons. Fifteen million sheep and one and a half million cattle died in a single year, while in the whole period sixty million sheep and four million cattle perished of thirst and starvation. Wheat production fell off to less than one third of the normal. For lack of water mining operations were checked. Many people left the country, the birth rate decreased, and the death rate rose.

There was another general drought in 1919-1920, which was severe but not so bad as the one of 1902. Besides, by that time the people had learned more about irrigation and storing up fodder for grassless winters.

The first irrigation enterprise in the country was undertaken by two brothers named Chaffey, who had had experience in dry farming in California. They secured from the government of Victoria a big grant of land, which was then described as a “howling wilderness of spinnifex and mallee scrub,” and irrigated it from the Murray River. It has been little more than a generation since then. Where once was that wilderness there are now twelve thousand acres of irrigated land supporting a population of six thousand people.