No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Perceptions of ‘normal’ climate in Queensland, Australia (1924–34)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2020
Abstract
The concept of ‘normal’ climatic conditions reflects the complexities of human understandings of the environment. Scholarship on settler societies has explored how culture, science and state imperatives combine to construct a notion of ‘normal’ climate. This study of the Callide Valley settlement (1924–34) in northern Australia, draws on government propaganda, farmers’ submissions to a 1934 government inquiry and meteorological data to reveal the discrepancy between rainfall reality and expectations. Promised fertile soil, plentiful water and an ideal climate by the government, new settlers flocked to the Callide Valley, many without farming experience or knowledge of the region’s subtropical climate. Drought and flood soon challenged the promises of a bountiful climate. These confused understandings of a normal climate continue today to shape agriculture in central Queensland.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © Cambridge University Press 2020
References
Notes
1 Queensland State Archives (hereafter QSA) ID 7937W, G. Graham, Under Secretary for Public Lands, 21st February 1919.
2 Meinig, D. W., On the Margins of the Good Earth: The South Australian Wheat Frontier, 1869–1884 (Adelaide, 1962)Google Scholar; Powell, J. M., Mirrors of the New World: Images and Image-Makers in the Settlement Process (Canberra, 1978)Google Scholar; Powell, J. M., An Historical Geography of Modern Australia (Cambridge, 1982).Google Scholar
3 Powell argues that each scheme contributed to the learning sequence. Powell, Mirrors of the New World, p. 77.
4 Sheldrick, Janis, ‘The Unreliable History of the Line of Reliable Rainfall’, in Sherratt, Tim, Griffiths, Tom and Robin, Libby, eds, A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia (Canberra, 2005).Google Scholar
5 The Queensland Government Intelligence and Bureau, Tourist, The Upper Burnett and Callide Valley Districts Queensland: Large Areas of Agricultural, Dairying, and Grazing Land Available for Selection (Brisbane, 1923), p. 5.Google Scholar
6 Tim Sherratt, ‘Human Elements’, in Sherratt, Griffiths and Robin, eds, A Change in the Weather, p. 4.
7 Cook, Margaret, ‘John Baillie Henderson: a hydrologist in colonial Brisbane’, International Review of Environmental History, 4:1 (2018), 69–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O’Gorman, Emily, ‘Colonial meteorologists and Australia’s variable weather’, University of Queensland Historical Proceedings, 16 (2005), 67–87Google Scholar; Douglas, Kirsty, ‘“For the Sake Of A Little Grass”: A Comparative History of Settler Science and Environmental Limits in South Australia and the Great Plains’, in Beattie, J., O’Gorman, E. and Henry, M., eds, Climate, Science and Colonization: Histories from Australia and New Zealand (New York, 2014), pp. 99–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Emily O’Gorman, ‘“Soothsaying” or Science?: H. C. Russell, Meteorology, and Environmental Knowledge of Rivers in Colonial Australia’, in Beattie, O’Gorman and Henry, eds, Climate, Science and Colonization, pp. 177–93.
8 Chris O’Brien, ‘Imported Understandings: Calendars, Weather and Climate in Tropical Australia 1870s–1940s’, in Beattie, O’Gorman and Henry, eds, Climate, Science and Colonisation, pp. 195–211. Mike Hulme also argues that meteorology imposes order. Hulme, Mike, Weathered: Cultures of Climate (California, 2017), p. 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 This link with learning and nature through time, experience and labour has been identified by Scott, James C., Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998)Google Scholar; White, Richard, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York, 1995); Sherratt, ‘Human Elements’, p. 4.Google Scholar
10 Hulme, Mike, Dessai, Suraje, Lorenzoni, Irene and Nelson, Donald R., ‘Unstable climates: exploring the statistical and social constructions of “normal” climate’, Geoforum, 40 (2009), 197–206, 198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Jones, Rebecca, Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia (Melbourne, 2017).Google Scholar
12 Holmes, Katie and Mirmohamadi, Kylie, ‘Howling wilderness and promised land: imagining the Victorian Mallee 1840–1914’, Australian Historical Studies, 46:2 (2015), 191–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karskens, Grace, ‘Floods and flood-mindedness in early colonial Australia’, Environmental History, 21 (April 2016), 317–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Hulme, Weathered, pp. 4–9.
14 Ibid., p. 92.
15 Ibid., pp. 8, 29; Hulme, ‘Unstable climates’, 198.
16 Hulme, Weathered, pp. 27, 22.
17 Camboon Station 39022, Lat 25.03° S and Long 150.43° E; Kroombit Station 39240, Lat 24.45° S and Long 150.80° E; Barfield Station 39149, Lat 24.61° S and Long 150.28° E; Jambin Station Lat 24.20° S and Long 150.37° E; Goovigen Station 39048, Lat 24.15° S and Long 150.29° E.
18 Biloela station 39006, Lat 24.38° S and Long 150.52° E.
19 Jambin Station Lat 24.20° S and Long 150.37° E and Goovigen Station 39048, Lat 24.15° S and Long 150.29° E.
20 ‘Bright Spring Prospects’, Central Queensland Herald, 20th July 1933, p. 8.
21 ‘Jambin’, Morning Bulletin, 10th April 1929, p. 10.
22 The Big Valley Story (Gympie, 1974), n.p.
23 Sherratt, ‘Human Elements’, pp. 1–17; Claire Fenby, Don Garden and Joëlle Gergis, ‘“The Usual Weather in New South Wales is Uncommonly Bright and Clear … Equal to the Finest Summer Day in England”: Flood and Drought in New South Wales, 1788–1815’, in Beattie, O’Gorman and Henry, eds, Climate, Science and Colonization, p. 50.
24 Report and Recommendations Following on An Economic Investigation by the Land Administration Board of the Upper Burnett and Callide Valley Lands and of the Operations of ‘The Upper Burnet and Callide Lands Settlement Act of 1923’ (Brisbane, 1929), p. 5. Note that the Upper Burnett lands were further south and were settled before the Callide Valley.
25 Cameron, David, ‘Closer Settlement in Queensland: The Rise and Decline of the Agrarian Dream, 1860s–1960s’, in Davidson, Graeme and Brodie, Marc, eds, Struggle Country: The Rural Ideal in Twentieth Century Australia (Melbourne, 2005), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar
26 The Queensland Government Intelligence and Bureau, Tourist, The Upper Burnett and Callide Valley Districts Queensland: Large Areas of Agricultural, Dairying, and Grazing Land Available for Selection, Bureau (Brisbane, 1923), pp. 5–6, 19.Google Scholar
27 Cronon, William, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991), p. 34Google Scholar; Worster, Donald, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; Bower, Shannon S., ‘Natural and unnatural complexities: flood controls along Manitoba’s Assiniboine River’, Journal of Historical Geography, 36 (2010), 57–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Griffiths, Tom, Forests of Ash: An Environmental History (Cambridge, 2001), p. 190Google Scholar; Pawson, Eric, ‘On the Edge: Making Urban Spaces’, in Pawson, Eric and Brooking, Tom, eds, Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand (Dunedin, 2013), p. 228Google Scholar; Douglas, ‘“For the Sake Of A Little Grass”’, pp. 99–117, 112.
28 Cameron, and Murphy, D. J., ‘Edward Granville Theodore’, in Murphy, D. J. and Joyce, R. B., eds, Queensland Political Portraits, 1859–1952 (Brisbane, 1978), p. 331.Google Scholar
29 Queensland Government Intelligence and Tourist Bureau, Upper Burnett and Callide Valley Districts, pp. 5–10.
30 Ibid., p. 13.
31 Ibid., p. 31.
32 Ibid., p. 38.
33 ‘Callide Valley’, Morning Bulletin, 1st August 1933, p. 3.
34 The Big Valley Story, n.p.
35 Goovigen and District Schools Golden Jubilee, 1926–1976 (Biloela, 1976), pp. 13, 35.
36 Ibid., p. 63.
37 Report and Recommendations Following on An Economic Investigation by the Land Administration Board, p. 16.
38 Ibid., p. 16.
39 Ibid., pp. 15–16.
40 ‘Official Inquiry’, Central Queensland Herald, 8th February 1934, p. 10.
41 ‘Callide Inquiry’, Morning Bulletin, 5th February 1934, p. 5.
42 ‘Plight of Settlers’, The Week, 7th February 1934, p. 26.
43 ‘Official Inquiry’, Central Queensland Herald, 8th February 1934, p. 10.
44 ‘“Close-up” of Farmers’ Lives’, Telegraph, 27th February 1934, p. 11.
45 ‘The Callide Tragedy’, Morning Bulletin, 23rd March 1934, p. 6.
46 Ibid., p. 6.
47 Holmes and Mirmohamadi, ‘Howling wilderness and promised land’, 193.
48 QSA Item ID 1013453, William Vivian Cahill, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
49 QSA Item ID 1012978, G. Carruthers, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
50 QSA Item ID 1013676, F. McCaffrey, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
51 QSA Item ID 101803, W. T. Stewart, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
52 QSA Item ID 1013790, Daniel Smith, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
53 QSA Item ID 1013643, E. Lord, Confidential Reports of Selectors; ‘The Callide Tragedy’, Morning Bulletin, 23rd March 1934, p. 6.
54 QSA Item ID 1013827, H. J. Tucker, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
55 QSA Item ID 1013453, William Vivian Cahill, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
56 QSA Item ID 10134921, A. W. Cox, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
57 QSA Item ID 1013665, C. Morgan Jr, Confidential Reports of Selectors; QSA Item ID 1013785, E. T. Simpson, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
58 QSA Item ID 1013844, L. C. Wallace, Confidential Reports of Selectors; QSA Item ID 1013782, C. Shelton, Confidential Reports of Selectors; QSA Item ID 1013635, H. Leighton, Confidential Reports of Selectors; QSA Item ID 1013827, H. J. Tucker, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
59 QSA Item ID 1013465, P. J. Cavanagh, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
60 QSA Item ID 1013713, Charles Edgar Peacock, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
61 QSA Item ID 1013749, A. F. Richardson, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
62 QSA Item ID 1013839, Guy Vivian, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
63 QSA Item ID 1013673, R. A. Macfarlane, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
64 QSA Item ID 1013709, H. Paine, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
65 QSA Item ID 1013777, E. Schunemann, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
66 ‘Thriving Population’, Central Queensland Herald, 22nd November 1934, p. 39.
67 QSA Item ID 1013782, C. Shelton, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
68 QSA Item ID 1013857, G. E. Wickham, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
69 QSA Item ID 1013877, M. E. Young, Confidential Reports of Selectors.
70 ‘The Upper Burnett and Callide Valley Districts, Queensland’, Catholic Press (Sydney), 11th October 1923, p. 29.
71 ‘Queensland Crown Lands’, The Farmer and the Settler (Sydney), 15th December 1922, p. 8. Same advertisement printed in Sydney Mail, 3rd December 1922, p. 46.
72 ‘Meal Tickets for Land Hungry’, Smith’s Weekly (Sydney), 6th January 1923, p. 28.
73 McDonald, Lorna, Rockhampton: A History of City and District (Brisbane, 1981), p. 486.Google Scholar
74 ‘Meteorology’, Capricornian, 8th August 1929, p. 47.
75 NAA CP211/2, Investigations-Queensland-Upper Burnett and Callide, Devereux, Vice Chairman of to Premier William Forgan Smith, 10th May 1928.
76 NAA CP211/2 Investigations-Queensland-Upper Burnett and Callide, Vice Chairman, 19th April 1928.
77 QSA Item ID 7937, Royal Commission on Public Works, Proposed Railways to open up the Northern Burnett Districts, 1919, XIV.
78 Report and Recommendations Following on An Economic Investigation by the Land Administration Board, p. 10.
79 ‘Immigration Queensland Government’s Scheme’, Sydney Stock and Station Journal, 25th January 1921, p. 2; ‘State Parliament’, Daily Standard, 19th February 1920, p. 9.
80 Report and Recommendations Following on An Economic Investigation by the Land Administration Board, pp. 15–16.
81 QSA Item ID 1013823, Joseph Toyne, Confidential Reports of Selectors.