DROUGHT, FLOOD,FIRE AND PLAGUE

Drought, flood, fire and plague have always figured prominently in the history of this wide brown land of ours.

They occur fairly regularly and are faced stoically by the men and women whose livelihoods depend on their wisdom and knowledge — a knowledge born of hard experience.

In the 1940s a savage drought combined with a rabbit plague depleted much of the country.

Some time ago I talked to men who knew all about plagues and pestilence.

“I remember when we had a plague of redlegged mites,” said Peter. “Carrying capacity was so low that something had to be done.

“There was no dirt and no cover and when that happens there’s no growth.”

In the 1950s, 60s and early 70s the improvements made to the land were enormous.

“With help from the Department of Agriculture, a program of pasture improvement was begun,” continued Peter.

“We used equipment in a small way, putting seed boxes on top of the chisel plough to seed the land.

“When the ryegrass and clover grew we had great problems with the mites which used to attack the chlorophyll in the clover leaf and you would then have the comical sight of people all over the countryside on their knees, backside up, examining the ground for these very small pests.”

Then there was flood.

The 1950s saw plenty of rain in NSW and many rivers flooded.

I spoke to several people in the Central West about their experiences.

“From the age of eight I rode my bike to where I went to school,” said Pauline. “I had to go through five gates and cross three creeks.

“My parents gave me instructions on how to cross the first creek which flowed into a big dam. I had to keep left and avoid a big hole. I was scared sti !

“The next creek was a problem as I had to hop o my bike and jump onto a big rock in the middle.

When the creek was in flood the rock was submerged but somehow I managed to become quite skilled at judging the depth of the water and if it was too deep there was no school for me that day!”

A farmer’s life is quite often a di cult one, made no easier by the occurrence of plague — rabbits, mice and locusts.

Brian remembered the primitive methods used to combat locusts in the 1940s, when men with sacks containing bran laced with poison on their backs, would laboriously cast it by hand, covering only an acre a day.

Kevin had a milk run in 1966 when another locust invasion occurred and at 2am he would see the street lamps covered with a thick carpet of insects, which disappeared only with the first rays of the sun, taking o for greener pastures like the bowling green where they lay two inches deep.

Later, I talked with Dennis whose family has owned a large property for several generations.

“In the early days there were very few fences to control the livestock and shepherds lived with the sheep they looked after,” he told me. “When new owners took over, the first thing they did was to erect about 200 miles of fences to control the stock.

“Until a few years ago, it was still possible to see the relics of the dwellings which had been lived in by the shepherds.

“I used to trap rabbits when I was a boy,” he continued. “My brother and I used to watch the market prices for rabbit skins and when there was a glut we decided to store our skins in an old tank for a couple of months before taking them to a dealer. The main problem was that, in the early stage, the skins contained moisture and the longer we stored them, the drier and lighter they became. When we sold them, the profit was no greater than if we’d sold them straight away. We learned a valuable lesson in economics!”

Later I talked to Jack.

“I was born in the desert country of South Australia. It was very isolated, with only a 35mile two-wheel track from the railway siding into the homestead, and from the house to the other end of the place was another 35 miles,” said Jack.

“Environmentally the rabbit plague was a disaster. They not only ate the grass in competition with the sheep but also ate the roots of the vegetation, causing widespread erosion.

“Due to this Australia lost important markets, both locally and internationally. This, combined with a long drought in the 1940s, proved devastating.

“Manpower, which could have otherwise been used, was involved in heavy manual labour, digging out a multitude of burrows. It was hard work and had to be done without mechanised help. When help was available it was very basic and not well organised.

“In the 1940s and 50s we used to lay long trails of carrots laced with arsenic and I remember one night when we killed 4000 rabbits.”

The rabbit plague had a rather mixed e ect.

While causing great hardship to those whose livelihood was linked to the land, it gave, in the short term, a breathing space for the unemployed in the Great Depression, whose survival often depended on their ability to trap rabbits for both skins and food.

It wasn’t until the arrival of Myxomatosis, the disease which had a great e ect on the numbers of rabbits, that it all changed.

Copyright HelenMcAnulty 2023