‘The Long, Continued Dry’

Abstract

Droughts are a canonical feature of Australian history and climate, and Australia’s paleoclimate and colonial past is dotted with extended periods of low rainfall. The Federation Drought was one such period. The result of a series of El Niño events, it parched much of Australia between 1895 and 1903 and remains one of the most significant and prolonged periods of rainfall deficiency since European colonisation. It also coincided with, and fuelled, a substantial increase in press coverage of the weather. In this article we examine reportage of the Federation Drought through two newspapers from the Victorian city of Bendigo: The Bendigo Advertiser and The Bendigo Independent. We identify themes that have persisted in drought coverage to the present day, highlighting the role the press has played in shaping how communities and policy makers have understood and managed the extremities of Australia’s climate. We also offer insights into the evolution of current drought reportage and the perspectives it enables or silences.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate
• drought
• Federation Drought
• country press
• media
• Bendigo

Introduction

Bendigo is a large regional centre, with a population of 120,000, located in central Victoria on the traditional lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung.¹ Figure 1. The extraordinary wealth of its gold deposits, discovered by colonists in 1851 and subsequently developed by quartz mining, fostered its rapid growth. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Bendigo was also a key service centre for a growing agricultural hinterland stretching north to the state border and encompassing the Northern Plains as well as newly settled districts in the northwest known as the Mallee.

FIGURE 1. Location map. (Map design: Sharon Harrup).

Bendigo, like most regions of south-eastern Australia, was profoundly affected by the Federation Drought (1895–1903). Eastern Australia has one of the world’s most erratic climates, dominated by El Niño and La Niña events in which oscillating extremes of dry and wet are not abnormal but part of the continent’s natural weather system. ² In this context, the very concept of a drought or flood is as much a settler construction as an ecological reality. Nevertheless, the Federation Drought was the most prolonged period of dryness since the widespread establishment of European farming in the nineteenth century and culminated in the devastating aridity of 1902.³ Figure 2. Wheat yields plummeted and stock numbers fell to half the number recorded before the drought.⁴ The length, social impact and economic consequences of the Federation Drought means it remains a spectre in Australia's climate history, despite subsequent long droughts occurring across much of eastern Australia in 1937–45 (the World War 2 Drought) and from 1996 to 2010 (the Millennium Drought).

FIGURE 2. Rainfall deciles, 1 November 1901 to 31 October 1902. Reproduced by permission of the Bureau of Meteorology, © 2023.

The Federation Drought also coincided with (and ultimately took its name from) the movement to federate Australia’s colonies into one Commonwealth, an event which took place in 1901. Heightened anxiety about the country’s vulnerability to invasion powered the momentum for Federation and confirmed the government’s commitment to establishing yeoman farmers across the land. The temperate climate of southern Australia, in particular, was promoted as well-suited to European agriculture. Settlers would not only bring prosperity to the country through the production of wheat and sheep but populate the nation’s ‘empty’ spaces, shaping the emergence of a national character rooted in hard work and persistence, and ensuring the ‘racial purity’ of the new nation.⁵ The severity of the drought called this vision into question. The early years of Australia’s nationhood, therefore, saw policy makers wrestling with the question of how to promote rural settlement in the face of continued aridity.

Drawing on our combined expertise in journalism studies, climate science and environmental history, we employ a case study of the Bendigo press to identify key themes in press reportage of the Federation Drought. We use ‘theme’ to indicate ‘reoccurring topics, ideas or patterns’ that seek to give meaning to the subject under discussion, as outlined by Hawkins.⁶ We also draw on Ward’s argument, made in the context of the Millennium Drought a century later, that since droughts are complex and lack a ‘defining, cataclysmic event’ around which to peg a news story, journalists have long fallen back on ‘preconstructed templates’ or thematic containers as a way to make sense of drought.⁷ These themes shaped the ways in which people—and policy makers—understood and thought about drought, silencing some perspectives while foregrounding others. They have also proved remarkably enduring; media analyses of recent droughts have frequently identified similar themes, (although typically with little recognition of their long history). In this article we offer insights into the reasons such taken-for-granted notions came into being. We believe that investigating the key themes that have helped frame drought reportage for more than a century also sheds light on the evolution of contemporary community and government responses to drought and the interests that they serve (or fail to serve).

Press coverage of the Federation Drought forms the specific focus of this paper. Country newspapers in Victoria had covered earlier droughts. Such reportage, however, was typically sporadic, highly localised and often reliant on travelling or local correspondents.⁸ The unprecedented (at least from the perspective of white settlers) length of the Federation Drought, led to considerable media coverage and crystalised public perceptions that they were in the grip of an unparalleled event. Further, the rapid expansion of settlement and its penetration into semi-arid regions such as the Mallee by the1890s, along with the depletion of land through overstocking and overcultivation, made farming more vulnerable to drought and its effects more visible—and therefore more newsworthy. At the same time, the evolution of telegraphic and meteorological networks allowed newspapers to experiment with new ways of reporting the weather.⁹

Literature

Historian Don Garden has described the Federation Drought as ‘the most widely recognised in Australia’s European history’.¹⁰ He and others have teased out its diverse economic, social and cultural impacts including its role in framing an agrarian mythology of heroic struggle against a hostile land and re-energising campaigns for water engineering projects.¹¹ Broader studies exploring the cultural history of climate in Australia also offer an important context for the climatological imaginings that surround drought.¹² Histories that focus specifically on Bendigo typically evoke its early goldmining heritage, including a significant study of Indigenous participation in the gold era.¹³ The impact of the Federation Drought on Bendigo’s agricultural hinterland (especially the Mallee) has been investigated by several historians including Keating, Ballinger and Broome and colleagues.¹⁴

Scholarship centred specifically on media coverage of the Federation Drought, however, has been limited. Although both Antonello and Tierney and colleagues have analysed rural and metropolitan newspapers (amongst other sources) to investigate the effects of the drought, they concentrated, respectively, on settlers’ acquisition of environmental knowledge and regional differences.¹⁵ Our study, therefore, is the first to focus solely on the country press to identify dominant themes during the Federation Drought. As Morrison and Kirkpatrick have demonstrated, the influence of country newspapers was profound.¹⁶ Newspapers created an ‘imagined world’ of shared concerns for their readers, not only communicating news but fostering social cohesion, enabling political organisation and disseminating new ideas.¹⁷ Country newspapers in particular played a critical role in disseminating information not considered newsworthy by the metropolitan press.¹⁸

Research into media coverage of more recent droughts has emerged across a range of academic disciplines, but with a common methodological focus on media discourse analysis since the 1990s. Media discourse is commonly understood as ‘interactions that take place through a broadcast platform, whether spoken or written, in which the discourse is oriented to a non-present reader, listener or viewer.’¹⁹ While we also employ media discourse analysis in this article, we note some limitations when examining newspapers from this period. As Matheson observes in his study of the ‘birth’ of news discourse in British newspapers between 1880 and 1930, papers in the Victorian era were a mixture of different ‘styles, voices, and types of text’ and over this period the ‘epistemological status of the news text changed from that of a collection of raw information to that of a form of knowledge in itself’.²⁰

Bendigo newspapers on the cusp of the twentieth century reflect this mixture of text types. While editorial voices were emerging on particular issues such as drought assistance and water supply, other items consisted entirely of raw information, or anonymous correspondent reports. This complicates the extent to which they could be considered part of a discourse in the sense that this is now understood. However, as we will show, the drought was also a catalyst for the intensification of discourses around a set of themes that persist in media coverage of drought.

Taxonomies of Drought

As Ewart notes, media coverage of drought is an under-researched topic of inquiry within the wider research field of natural disasters.²¹ Studies of press reportage of droughts since the 1990s have identified a range of story categories that have been variously described as ‘topics’, ‘subject groupings’ and ‘news categories’.²² This lack of conceptual clarity or consistent terminology—a ‘theme’ in one article may be a ‘topic’ in another—makes direct comparisons difficult. Nevertheless, common characterisations include: drought as crisis rather than an inherent part of the Australian climate, heightened interest in climate patterns and weather events, and a tendency to depict them as unprecedented, an agricultural rather than urban focus accompanied by stories that promote agrarian values and sympathy for drought-affected farmers, and the responsibility of the government and public to provide drought relief. Rutledge-Prior and Beggs’ recent examination of media coverage of drought in 2018 has confirmed the ubiquity and dominance of these storylines.²³ They also note the important role played by studies of drought media coverage in critiquing their persistence.²⁴

The dominant characterisations identified by such studies, we argue, have a long history. In the remainder of this article, we analyse themes evident in press coverage of the Federation Drought. In doing so, we illuminate how many align closely with storylines still being identified in the twenty-first century. We also address a research gap in analysis of the role of local media in covering natural disasters by focusing on two regional newspapers, addressing what Ewart has observed to be a typical research bias towards metropolitan and national press reportage and perspectives on drought.²⁵

Methods

This article analyses coverage of drought in The Bendigo Advertiser (Advertiser) and The Bendigo Independent (Independent), established in 1853 and 1862, respectively. They were selected because they represent the interests of a major inland town servicing the northern areas of Victoria most affected by the Federation Drought. Figure 3. Although circulation and distribution figures are not available, both were clearly flourishing newspapers, demonstrating little substantive difference in content.²⁶ They were both also digitised. (The only other daily newspaper in Bendigo at this time—The Evening Mail—has not been digitised for the period covering the Federation Drought.)²⁷ The Bendigo press was part of a network of country newspapers that mushroomed across Victoria in the colonial period, buoyed by compulsory schooling, increased literacy rates and the growth of a sophisticated road, rail and telegraph network.²⁸

FIGURE 3. ‘Victoria’s Drought Problem’. (Bendigo locality indicated by inserted brown circle.) Source: The Argus. 15 October 1902, 6.

We searched both publications for articles that included the word ‘drought’, using the search capabilities of the National Library of Australia’s online search engine Trove and excluding false hits.²⁹ Table 1. Year-to-year variations occurred in tandem, broadly paralleling the severity of conditions. The number of items mentioning drought in 1902, for instance, was more than three times that of any previous year for the Independent and four times more for the Advertiser, reflecting the intensification of drought conditions. Although the Advertiser on average published a slightly higher number of drought articles, no discernible difference of approach was evident.

TABLE 1. Results per year using the keyword search term ‘drought’.

Newspaper	1895	1896	1897	1898	1899	1900	1901	1902
Independent	59	77	165	89	102	80	130	569
Advertiser	53	82	172	104	99	87	150	731

Using Trove’s capacity to order searches according to relevance and category type, we selected a total of 300 articles for close reading, and these form the basis of our findings. Within these articles, the papers’ positioning within the discourse was particularly evident in ‘editorials’ that referenced drought. Table 2. Although the newspapers did not specifically label these pieces as editorials, they clearly functioned as such, typically appearing on page two of each newspaper under the newspaper’s masthead.³⁰

TABLE 2. Editorials per year using the keyword search term ‘drought’.

Newspaper editorials	1895	1896	1897	1898	1899	1900	1901	1902
Independent	0	1	13	2	1	0	2	8
Advertiser	1	5	11	6	3	0	4	25

Findings

Although search engines (and keywords searches) operate within the constraints of available technology and content, they also offer opportunities for fine-grained analysis.³¹ In the case of the Bendigo press, recurring themes quickly became evident. Table 3. We have grouped these under the discourse categories of weather reporting, impacts, and responses and debates. An overarching narrative of crisis, too, was apparent. Although more research is needed to determine if drought coverage in Bendigo differed from other regional newspapers, the research of Morrison and Kirkpatrick suggests that—while there were local divergences—the country press reported on issues in broadly similar ways.³²

TABLE 3. Discourse categories and themes identified in Bendigo newspaper coverage of the Federation Drought.

Discourse Categories	Themes
Weather reporting	Rainfall deficiencies
	Extreme weather events
	Forecasts and prophesies
Impacts	Suffering of settlers
	Crop and stock losses
	Water shortage anxieties
	Cost of living crisis
Responses and debates	Water campaigning
	Charity appeals
	Church commentaries

Weather Reporting

Weather reporting in late nineteenth century Australian newspapers illustrates the relatively swift evolution in information provision from data to what we would now see as media discourse. Several colonies established observation stations and recorded meteorological readings from the 1850s.³³ The expansion of both observation stations and the telegraph network during the 1860s, however, permitted a more rapid dissemination of weather data (most Australian colonies were linked by telegraph by 1869).³⁴ Telegraph offices in country towns also allowed the provincial press ready access to weather information.³⁵ In his examination of the dynamic between telegraphy and the press, Cryle argues that by the turn of the century the ‘weather-mindedness’ promoted by colonial newspapers in the wake of this greater availability of climate data also brought experimentation with a range of news formats and techniques.³⁶ Significantly, these included official forecasts, greater prominence given to colonial meteorologists and their views, narrative accounts of weather events from across the continent and weather maps.³⁷

Rainfall Deficiencies

In Bendigo the first drought for which detailed records exist occurred in 1865-66. This was covered in the Advertiser (which printed meteorological readings from 1858). The Bendigo press also reported on a series of intermittent dry years that beset northern farmers between 1877 and 1885 and again in 1888, although these reports were typically sporadic and localised.

The onset of the Federation Drought, however, coincided with an escalation in weather reportage. The weather column—previously printed on a seemingly ad hoc basis—had become a daily fixture by the 1890s, typically including a short description of the previous day’s weather, followed by temperature and barometric readings (supplied for more than three decades by a well-known Bendigo jewelry store). Figure 4. Readings from the local government observatory were sometimes also included, as well as a colony-wide forecast from the colony’s chief meteorologist in Melbourne. Weather maps did not appear, although this was now a feature in some other newspapers.³⁸

FIGURE 4. J. B. Edwards jewelry store, c.1896. Despite changes in ownership, it provided meteorological readings to the Bendigo press from the 1860s. Creator: W. H. Robinson Studio. Museums Victoria https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/770814

A common drought discourse emerged around comparisons between current rainfall deficiencies and earlier records. As the Advertiser observed in 1902:

For the first 10 months of this year we have had 10.34 inches against 12.24 inches for the corresponding period in 1901 … With only two months to go … we are still three inches short of the lowest recorded annual rainfall in Bendigo. These figures speak for themselves in evidencing the severity of the drought.³⁹

During dry spells, any rain could be newsworthy, and falls were commonly linked to the extent to which they might mitigate drought conditions. Unexpected rainfall in December 1902 was heralded enthusiastically as ‘being of a most valuable and opportune character’ at a time when ‘The drought … was gradually enwrapping the Bendigo district in its devastating folds’.⁴⁰ The extensive use of local correspondents, whose reports travelled by both train and telegraph, also provided a comprehensive picture of where rain had fallen.

Extreme Weather Events

Articles discussing the drought frequently included the words ‘protracted’ or ‘prolonged’.⁴¹ They conveyed a clear message: such a dry spell was abnormal and must soon give way to ‘normal’ (regular) rainfall again. The climate knowledge held by Aboriginal people who had managed and adapted to Australia’s dry seasons over millennia was little considered. Only limited—and typically dismissive—references to Aboriginal groups and their experience or responses to drought appeared in the Bendigo press.⁴² This absence continued to be reflected in the coverage of subsequent droughts.

While drought is more complex than any single weather event, it was also associated with extreme heat and dust storms. A dust-storm that ‘raised clouds of blinding dust’ was described as beyond anything ‘experienced here before’ while a weather report informed readers:

The intense heat on Saturday … and again on Sunday, 109.4 degrees [43 degrees Celsius], followed by another oppressive day, proved most trying to people of strong constitutions, to say nothing of invalids. A couple of deaths due to heat apoplexy are reported locally.⁴³

Reports of these events fed into a broader sense of crisis, often conjuring the apocalyptic. They were also depicted as the result of natural forces. The extent to which poor habitation or European farming practices exacerbated the effects of drought and contributed to heat wave deaths or dust storms, was rarely raised.

Forecasts and Prophecies

The drought also generated interest in the enigma of broader climate patterns. As Cryle notes, at the end of the nineteenth century colonial meteorologists ‘came under increasing public pressure to account for the El Niño conditions that prevailed, and to indulge in weather prophecy—however problematic’.⁴⁴ They not only provided more narrative accounts of the weather based on the data they gathered, but also used newspapers as a forum to play out their professional rivalries.⁴⁵ In particular, the country’s most controversial meteorologist, the Queensland-based Clement Wragge, expanded his profile through his own forecasts, articles and disputes with other meteorologists, all of which were aired in Bendigo newspapers.⁴⁶ As the drought intensified, the Advertiser attempted to apply Wragge’s idea of predictable cycles to Bendigo’s recorded climate data but found insufficient evidence ‘either to prove or disprove them’.⁴⁷ Months earlier, the same paper published a satirical poem following Wragge’s unsuccessful attempt to seed clouds. The first lines read:

A lone and lowly prophet I,

Whose profits now are nil;

I raise the wind, I clear the sky,

I make the weather wet or dry,

Just at my own sweet will.

‘Zephyr’⁴⁸

The Independent was also critical of Wragge’s medium-term forecasting attempts, pointing out in an editorial that ‘his predictions for weeks past have been falsified by results’.⁴⁹ More generally, the Bendigo press reflected and promoted increasing public scrutiny of the government scientists employed as meteorologists. As the Independent editorialised in 1903:

The question of questions in Australia is in relation to the droughts. Will we ever be able to foretell their occurrence, and, therefore, make better provision against them … At present there is no such thing as a science of the weather. There cannot be science without law, and thus far we are perfectly in the dark regarding the laws by which the weather is governed.⁵⁰

Even such reportage, however, assumed that weather ‘laws’ must exist and it was the task of science to continue to seek them out.⁵¹

Impacts

Press coverage of the impacts of the drought typically had a rural focus and supported agrarian values. The crucial importance of agriculture to the nation, it was assumed, meant that settlers warranted special concessions, evoking what Aitken has labelled country-mindedness.⁵² Settlers were depicted as industrious, honest and engaged in wholesome labour, often in contrast to the perceived self-centred and less productive lives of urban dwellers.⁵³ There was also a powerful racial dimension. The settlers of north-west Victoria were ‘the right kind of men and women to build up the nation’, the Advertiser proclaimed: they would contribute to ‘the stability of the race’.⁵⁴

Suffering of Settlers

A major theme in the Bendigo press was that the impact of the drought fell far more heavily on rural settlers than urban dwellers. The challenges of the long drought were articulated through depictions of the stoic ‘pioneer’ struggling against a recalcitrant environment. As one report put it: ‘They must be heroic settlers indeed who can battle on, year after year in the face of such disabilities as these.’⁵⁵ The Advertiser also suggested that its (urban) readers would struggle to appreciate the impact of the drought elsewhere in the region without witnessing the conditions first-hand. ‘Bendigonians living in ease and comfort for the most part fail to recognise what the drought means to the northern and north-western districts.’⁵⁶ In this context, reports from local correspondents were critical to depicting the gravity of the drought beyond the city limits.⁵⁷

Concerns were also raised as to what an exodus of farmers would mean for Bendigo: ‘They will go to swell the town populations and with their poverty and competition help to depress the general standard of living.’⁵⁸ Fear of settlers abandoning their blocks was rooted in longstanding concerns of population drift to the towns as well as its imagined effect on the moral fibre of the nation.⁵⁹

Crop and Stock Losses

Another theme associated with the suffering settlers was crop failure and starving stock. By 1902, national sheep numbers of 100 million had nose-dived by half while Victorian wheat yields plunged to their lowest on record.⁶⁰ During the ominously dry winter of 1902, the Advertiser surmised that with the ‘normal’ period of heavy rains nearly past ‘it is not to be wondered at if the farmer casts anxious eyes at the clouds and the weather glass … One heavy rainfall would set it [wheat] … on its feet and secure its coming to the ear. Continued drought will wither it again, and finally.’⁶¹

Descriptions of the fate of famished livestock frequently drew upon an iconography of skeletal forms, dry bones and skulls. Norman Lindsay’s illustration originally published in the Bulletin but reprinted in the Independent in 1902 reflects the shared experience of human and animal misery.⁶² Figure 5. Bendigo’s role as a regional livestock market also ensured that spectacles of animal suffering were readily accessible to journalists. By 1902, the scale of the crisis was illustrated by horrifying reports of truckloads of sheep skeletons, ‘some whole and others disjointed’ enroute to the Bendigo bone mills. ‘Though minus skin and flesh their frames indicated that they had been at one time very valuable butcher's meat’, the Independent wrote, ‘The sight was a depressing one.’⁶³ The emotional response that such accounts prompted—teamed with reminders of the economic and food loss—was clearly one the Bendigo papers exploited.

FIGURE 5. Norman Lindsay, ‘In Drought Land.’ Bendigo Independent, 7 August 1902, 5. Courtesy of A., C., and H. Glad.

Water Shortage Anxieties

When the direct impact of drought on urban dwellers was raised, water supply was a key issue. Since the completion of the Coliban scheme in 1877, Bendigonians had believed themselves immune from water scarcity. By the third year of the drought, however, the main storage dam was almost dry and the town faced the threat of imminent water famine.⁶⁴ Passionate editorials in both the Advertiser and Independent advocated for an additional dam.⁶⁵ In the meantime, Bendigonians were warned of dwindling water supplies in the face of a drought beyond the experience of even ‘the oldest inhabitant’.⁶⁶ Such references to the memory of senior residents became a common trope during his period, underscoring the apparently unprecedented nature of the drought while also—unintentionally—highlighting the limits of settler knowledge.

Bendigo mining companies continued to use vast quantities of water for sluicing (at subsidised rates) and water trains were sent daily to the Mallee to relieve destitute settlers.⁶⁷ Nevertheless, the press frequently berated private householders deemed to be wasting water:

There is a deplorable, we might say criminal waste of the water by various of the householders and amateur gardeners of the district … Some amateur gardeners, not content with flooding their own premises, must flood the footpaths as well.⁶⁸

In the following year, at least two offenders were caught and had their water supply cut off.⁶⁹

Such reportage sought to lay the blame for water shortages on individuals Bendigonians—while avoiding discussion of the activities of larger users. Subsequent coverage of urban water shortages during the Millennium Drought reveals a similar focus on the actions of individuals while the scale of consumption by industry escaped critique.⁷⁰

Cost of Living Crisis

The impact of drought on the cost of living and its knock-on effect on town commerce was also a theme. ‘The advance in the price of butcher’s meat has been followed by an advance in the price of rabbits, white flour, bread, potatoes, oatmeal, and butter have increased so much that the thrifty housewife is at her wits’ end to know how to supply the wants of her husband and herself and those of her hungry children’, the Advertiser wrote.⁷¹ Three months later, the same paper reported that ‘the effect of the strain on some of the butchers is becoming very marked’, and that several planned to cease business altogether unless the situation changed.⁷²

Such reports threw into sharp relief the disruptive power of the drought on the smooth flow of primary produce into the town that in turn threatened the survival of myriad businesses reliant on agriculture. They also offered a glimpse into the gendered impact of drought—the ‘thrifty housewife’ who was expected to scrimp and save to feed her family while the price of foodstuffs soared.

Responses and Debates

By 1902 the press was increasingly framing the low rainfall of the previous seven years as one continuous drought. A prior view that saw the ‘normal’ climate of south-eastern Australia as one well suited to European agriculture was under challenge, and another understanding was emerging—periodic and prolonged drought as an inherent feature of the Australian climate. In response, Bendigo newspapers attempted to set the agenda for government policies that might address ongoing vulnerability to drought.⁷³

Water Campaigning

The chief focus of press agitation was the parliament’s so-called ‘criminal apathy’ in failing to provide reliable stock and domestic water to settlers across the Northern Plains and Mallee.⁷⁴ The exigencies of the long drought and the consequent suffering of settlers, Bendigo newspapers pointed out, had spotlighted the cost of this neglect. Of the 25 Advertiser editorials that referenced drought in 1902, for instance, more than half insisted on the need for government action on water supply. It was, the paper insisted, the ‘burning question of the day’.⁷⁵

Such agitation took place on a broader canvas. Across the country, the Federation Drought had highlighted both the value of water and public perceptions of it as a ‘controllable resource’.⁷⁶ River engineering had become the catchcry of nation building, expressed especially in the construction of dams that would prevent water running to ‘waste’. Debates on how best to utilise the waters of the Murray River, Australia’s largest river, prompted an inter-state conference in 1902, while Bendigo took a leading role in advocating for the ‘Goulburn scheme’—an ambitious project involving the construction of an off-river storage in the Goulburn Valley to provide water to the Northern Plains and Mallee via an immense channel.

Arguing for the benefits of the scheme, a vociferous editorial in the Advertiser described the cry for water as ‘piercing’ and urged Bendigonians to assert whatever ‘political and commercial influence’ they could muster in support of the project.⁷⁷ Following the state election, the Independent editorialised that the incoming government ‘should be liberally implored’ to immediately commence work on the Goulburn scheme. Not only would it safeguard against a recurrence of a drought ‘through which the region is now painfully and slowly passing’ but channel building would offer work to unemployed farmers.⁷⁸

Charity Appeals

Governments did not routinely offer monetary relief during drought. The onus, therefore, fell on private donations. Throughout Victoria, benefit concerts, distress funds and donation lists sprang up. In October 1902, the press reported on preparations for a ‘drought carnival’ in Bendigo which would include ‘the harriers, brigades, bands, school children, choral societies’.⁷⁹ Such action also reinforced agrarian sentiment and the perception that charitable intervention was the settlers’ due: ‘the north was the backbone of this portion of the State, and it was the duty of the Bendigo people to assist in every way, as it was no longer a question of drought, but desolation’.⁸⁰

Nevertheless, the idea of settlers as charity recipients did not sit well with the image of independent and resourceful pioneers that the papers cultivated. The Bendigo press, therefore, was careful to present their suffering as an outcome of the unparalleled drought and not due to any personal failure or lack of hard work on their part. (Indeed, the newspapers had a vested interest in safeguarding the reputation of the settlers, since it is likely—as settlement expanded—that they comprised a growing proportion of the newspapers’ subscribers.) For the same reason, the press expressed a preference for dispensing relief in the form of food and clothing or government subsidies for seed wheat, chaff and rail freight.⁸¹

As momentum grew for benefit events, there was also anxiety that drawing attention to the newly federated country’s drought challenges might tarnish Australia’s economic reputation and discourage British investment.⁸² Australia’s famed opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba, for instance, was compelled to retract a plea for drought donations from wealthy overseas friends. It created the impression, the Commonwealth government and commercial interests argued, that the nation was on the ‘verge of financial ruin’. ⁸³ By contrast, the Bendigo press expressed indignation at the rejection of Melba’s initiative, ‘How the country, the poor mallee selectors, the poor, suffering humanity of the north, the very starving flocks and herds, could they but speak, with one heart, with one accord, would thank Melba for the offer’ editorialised the Advertiser.⁸⁴

Both newspapers chose to represent the event as yet another example of the failure of city dwellers and politicians to understand the needs of rural people while framing Bendigo (and its newspapers) as a crucial mouthpiece in voicing these needs. It was the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce and a Melbourne newspaper, the Independent wrote, that had ‘thrown cold water’ on Melba’s offer.⁸⁵

Church Commentaries

Newspaper coverage showed how churches articulated and shaped understandings of the drought experience, including prayers for rain and collections for drought relief. Sermons, abbreviated for readers, offered perspectives that reflected more directly on human actions. Tonally, many read like newspaper editorials, even taking aim at politicians:

Much of the suffering from the present visitation was the result of bad financial management of the State for the last 50 years. If the money which had been squandered recklessly … had been rigidly used for the real development of the State, the whole of Northern Victoria, for example, would now be covered by irrigation works.⁸⁶

Ministers of religion were respected leaders and press coverage of their reflections contributed to public debate. In the conclusion of the sermon quoted above, the minister implied that poor political leadership on irrigation issues indicated failure to listen to a higher deity. Similarly, a subsequent sermon contended that if people ‘failed to make provision for the water that fell from the clouds we must pay the penalty’.⁸⁷ Such sermons reflected growing tensions within religious circles between those who saw drought as divine punishment demanding prayers for forgiveness, and liberal Protestants who argued that God expected human effort to solve human challenges.⁸⁸ Editorials in the Bendigo press demonstrate that it was the latter view that the newspapers supported.

Discussion

Although Australia's natural weather cycle includes periods of low rainfall, colonists experienced the Federation Drought as unprecedented in terms of its duration and widespread effects. At a time when some kinds of media discourse were still formative, we find that Australia’s Federation Drought energised the role of the press in interpreting both the scale and impact of rainfall deficiencies and the articulation of potential responses. Our focus on Bendigo newspapers also reveals some of the complexities regional newspapers managed in framing discourses that addressed town and country concerns, but which ultimately prioritised the plight of settlers working the land. While our article is focused on press coverage of the Federation Drought in one region, studies of country newspapers by Morrison and Kirkpatrick—highlighting common responses to a range of issues—suggest our findings might be generalisable.

We also find in Bendigo press coverage that the confluence of increased weather reportage, the long duration of the drought, and the increase in nation-building narratives fostered by Federation, meant that by 1902 a set of themes was evident in Federation Drought reportage. Moreover, most of these have persisted in subsequent media reporting. Of all the themes identified, only the routine reporting of sermons no longer features in the twenty-first century. Future research might explore the further development of drought-related themes and discourses over time by direct comparison with contemporary media accounts. Issues that press coverage avoided or downplayed also warrant further interrogation, including critiques of European farming practices or references to Indigenous land management practices.⁸⁹ Climate change has recently emerged as an additional theme in contemporary drought reportage. Although the Federation Drought preceded scientific understanding of anthropomorphic climate change, there is a relationship between the discourses that developed around the search for long term weather patterns in the nineteenth century and contemporary media interest in climate drivers such as the El Niño/La Niña oscillations.⁹⁰

The continuities we have revealed between the key themes identified in press coverage of the Federation Drought and media storylines still used to frame drought discourses in the twenty-first century are significant. They not only offer insights into how public understandings of drought were formed in the past, but they have implications for current community and policy responses to periods of aridity and shape decisions about whose interests are best served (or ignored) by mitigation attempts. They also shed light on the long-standing human quest to comprehend the weather and the ways in which people have tried to manage, manipulate and make sense of the extremities of the Australian climate.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant GA137306.

Notes on contributors

Karen Twigg

Karen Twigg, Centre for the Study of the Inland, La Trobe University, Melbourne 3086, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

Lawrie Zion

Lawrie Zion, Research and Industry Engagement: School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria 3086, Australia

Linden Ashcroft

Linden Ashcroft, Science Communication and Climate Science, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3050, Australia

Notes

1 REMPLAN, “Bendigo Economy Profile.”

2 Lorrey and Bostock, “Modern Climate and Paleoclimate”; Gergis and Ashcroft. “Rainfall Variations,” 2973–2987.

3 Garden, The Federation Drought, 270.

4 Foley, Droughts in Australia, 208.

5 Grimshaw and Lake, Creating a Nation, 297. The possibility of 'racial purity' in Australia at this time was also predicated on the false perception that Indigenous Australians were doomed to extinction. McGregor, Imagined Destinies.

6 Hawkins, “Thematic Analysis,” 1757

7 Ward, “Drought, News Media and Policy Debate,” 88–89.

8 See for instance: Advertiser. 17 September 1881, 30 December 1881, 19 April 1882, 3.

9 Cryle, “From Data to News,” 93–102.

10 Garden, “The Federation Drought”; 270.

11 Anderson, Endurance; Garden, “Extreme Weather and ENSO,”; McKernan, Drought: The Red Marauder; Jones, Slow Catastrophes; Keating, The Drought Walked Through; Miller, Federated and Fed-Up.

12 Robin, Griffiths and Sherratt, A Change in the Weather; Beattie, Henry and O’Gorman. Climate, Science, and Colonization.

13 Cusack, Bendigo: A History; Cahir, Black Gold; Fahey and Mayne, Gold Tailings; Russell, Water for Gold.

14 Broome et al, Mallee Country; Keating, The Drought Walked Through. Ballinger, An Inch of Rain.

15 Antonello, “Learning and Settling.”: Tierney, Parton and Duffy, “Three Raindrops.” West and Smith’s survey of media discourses extends back to 1900 but does not single out the Federation Drought for special analysis. West and Smith, “Drought, Discourse, and Durkheim.”

16 Morrison, Engines of Influence; Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience.

17 Curthoys and Schultz, Journalism, 1.

18 Ewart, “Drought Is a Disaster,” 78.

19 Anne O’Keeffe, “Media and Discourse Analysis,” 441.

20 Matheson, “Birth of News Discourse.” 564, 559.

21 Ewart, “Drought is a Disaster,” 73.

22 Such studies include: Bell and Moller, “The Green Drought.”; Easton and Cockfield, “Reporting the Drought.”; Rutledge-Prior and Beggs, “Droughts and Fleeting Rains.”; Wahlquist, “Media Representations.”; West and Smith, “Drought, Discourse, and Durkheim.”

23 Rutledge-Prior and Beggs, “Droughts and Fleeting Rains.” 106–129.

24 Rutledge Prior and Beggs, “Droughts and Fleeting Rains.” 111.

25 Ewart, “Drought Is a Disaster,” 68.

26 Kwasitsu, “Newspaper Press in Bendigo.” 187–188. One exception noted by Kwasitsu was their differing attitudes to free-trade. 58.

27 The Advertiser also printed a weekly illustrated supplement, The Bendigonian.

28 Morrison, Engines of Influence.

29 False hits included OCR errors. Items categorised under ‘Articles’ and ‘Detailed Lists, Results, Guides’ were consulted.

30 The positioning was less consistent in the Independent.

31 Sherratt, “Hacking Heritage,” 7.

32 Morrison, Engines of Influence; Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience. See, for instance, Kirkpatrick’s discussion of the dominance of agrarian topics. 170–172.

33 Hone and Livingston, “Science and Technology,” 110–111

34 Hone and Livingston, “Science and Technology,” 111–115

35 Morrison, Morrison, Engines of Influence, 141.

36 Cryle, “From Data to News,” 101

37 Cryle, “From Data to News,” 93–102; Home and Livingston. “Science and Technology,” 109–127.

38 Hone and Livingston, “Science and Technology,” 114.

39 Advertiser, 1 November 1902, 5.

40 Advertiser, 18 December 1902, 3.

41 See, for instance: Advertiser, 10 June 1897, 3; Advertiser, 4 December 1902, 2.

42 Advertiser, 29 January 1898, 4; Independent, 25 July 1902, 2.

43 Advertiser, 13 November 1902, 3.; Advertiser, 1 February 1898, 3.

44 Cryle, “From Data to News,” 98.

45 Cryle, “From Data to News,” 93.

46 Cryle, “From Data to News,” 93–102

47 Advertiser, 4 December 1902, 2.

48 Advertiser, 5 July 1902, 3.

49 Independent, 15 September 1902, 2.

50 Independent, 16 April 1903, 2.

51 See also Independent, 15 September 1902, 2.

52 Don Aitkin, “Countrymindedness,” 34–41.

53 Cockfield and Botterill. “Signs of Countrymindedness,” 609–622.

54 Advertiser, 4 March 1902, 2.

55 Advertiser, 23 October 1902, 2.

56 Advertiser, 8 March 1902, 5.

57 Independent, 12 May 1897, 3.

58 Independent, 4 October 1902, 3.

59 Davison, “Country Life,” 43–44.

60 Foley, Droughts in Australia, 208, 20.

61 Advertiser, 1 August 1902, 1.

62 “The West Waiting,” The Bulletin, 12 July 1902, 7.

63 Independent, 7 October 1902, 2.

64 Independent. 15 June 1897, 2.

65 Independent. 30 June 1897, 2; Advertiser. 18 January 1898, 2.

66 Independent, 15 August 1901, 3.

67 Advertiser, 20 July 1899, 3; Advertiser, 8 November 1902, 5.

68 Independent, 12 March 1901, 2.

69 Advertiser, 8 November 1902, 5.

70 Bell, “The Driest Continent,” 581–589.

71 Advertiser, 26 August 1902, 2.

72 Advertiser, 12 November 1902, 2.

73 Reporting in daily newspapers exerted greater influence than the irregular speeches of politicians. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience, 78.

74 Advertiser, 6 February 1902, 2.

75 Advertiser, 6 February 1902, 2

76 0’Gorman, Flood Country, 26.

77 Independent, 11 March 1902, 2.

78 Independent, 4 October 1902, 4.

79 Advertiser, 1 November 1902, 5.

80 Advertiser, 1 November 1902, 5.

81 Advertiser, 13 November 1902, 2.

82 Advertiser, 5 November 1902, 2.

83 Advertiser, 4 November 1902, 3.

84 Advertiser, 6 November 1902, 2.

85 Independent, 17 November 1902, 2.

86 Advertiser, 24 November 1902, 3.

87 Independent, 8 December 1902, 3.

88 Beattie, “Science, Religion and Drought,” 141–142.

89 Rutledge and Beggs, “Droughts and Fleeting Rains,” 125.

90 Garden, The Federation Drought, 289.