Abstract
The Murray and Darling river systems together cover approximately one-seventh of Australia and most of the eastern inland of the continent (Figure 9.1). Within this large area are diverse local environments; from the Murray River in the south, which receives spring snowmelt from the Great Dividing Range, to the rivers in the north, like the Paroo and Warrego, which are sometimes fed by southward moving tropical rains. Despite these local differences, all of these rivers are characterized by their capacity to both intermittently run dry and significantly flood, albeit to varying degrees.1 Indeed, in recent years the Darling River has been ranked among the most variable of the world’s large rivers.2 These rivers have been central to human histories in the region for more than 55,000 years, and their variable flows and ecologies have significantly shaped, and been shaped by, Aboriginal, British colonial, and migrant cultures and societies.3
I would like to thank James Beattie, Thom van Dooren, and two anonymous referees for their suggestions on drafts of this chapter, which greatly improved the final version. The comments and questions of participants at the “Climate, Empire and Science Symposium,” held at the University of Waikato in 2010, helped to develop the focus of this work in its early stages. Sections of research are based on: Emily O’Gorman, Flood Country: An Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin (Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO Publishing: 2012). This chapter was written during a postdoctoral candidacy funded through the Australian Research Council (FL0992397).
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Notes
B. Pittock et al., “Climatic Background to Past and Future Floods in Australia,” in Floods in an Arid Continent, ed. A. Poiani (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006), 13–18.
J. T. Puckridge et al., “Flow Variability and the Ecology of Large Rivers,” Marine and Freshwater Research, 49 (1998), 62, figure 4.
Jessica Weir, Murray River Country: An Ecological Dialogue with Traditional Owners (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2009), 26–46;
and, Paul Sinclair, The Murray: A River and Its People (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 3–25.
See also, Katherine Anderson, Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 267.
Michael Pearson and Jane Lennon, Pastoral Australia: Fortunes, Failures & Hard Yakka (Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO Publishing, 2010), 19–39;
and, Emily O’Gorman, Flood Country: An Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin (Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO Publishing, 2012), 3–7, 61–77.
Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth (Carlton, Victoria: Miegunyah Press, Carlton, 2000), 281–96; and, O’Gorman, Flood Country, 3–7, 61–77.
Bill Gammage, “The Wiradjuri War, 1838–40,” The Push 16 (1983), 3–17.
W. S. Jevons, Extract from a letter to his sister Henrietta, January 4, 1857, quoted in Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons, Edited by His Wife, ed. Harriet A. Jevons, (London: Macmillan, 1886), 50. See also, O’Gorman, “Colonial Meteorologists and Australia’s Variable Weather,” University of Queensland Historical Proceedings 16 (2005): 70.
Katherine Anderson, Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 1–9, 83–130;
and, Jan Golinski, British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 203–13.
See, W. J. Gibbs, Origins of Australian Meteorology, Metarch Papers No.12 (Melbourne: Bureau of Meteorology, 1998), 5–23;
and, R. W. Home and K. T. Livingston, “Science and Technology in the Story of Australian Federation: The Case of Meteorology, 1876–1908,” Historical Records of Australian Science 10, no. 2 (1994), 109–11.
Home and Livingston, “Science and Technology in the Story of Australian Federation,” 109–11. See also, Kirsty Douglas, “Under Such Sunny Skies”: Understanding Weather in Colonial Australia, 1860–1901, Metarch Papers No. 17 (Melbourne: Bureau of Meteorology, 2007), 4.
See, for example, H. C. Russell, “The River Darling: The Water Which Should Pass Through It,” Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 13 (1880), 169–70.
See also, John Merritt, That Voluminous Squatter: W. E. Abbott, Wingen (Bungendore, NSW: Turalla Press, 1999), 20–22.
Russell, “Meteorological Periodicity,” Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 10 (1877), 151.
Joseph Norman Lockyer, Contributions to Solar Physics (London: Macmillan, 1874), 432.
James Rodger Fleming and Vladimir Jankovic, “Revisiting Klima,” Osiris 26, no. 1 (2011), 1–15, (quote, 6–7).
Russell, “Meteorological Periodicity,” 160–64. Russell was, however, not the first modern meteorologist to suggest that climatic patterns indicated a nineteen-year recurring cycle, which was an ancient Egyptian concept. He assumed he was, until it was revealed by an audience member listening to a paper Russell was giving to the Royal society of New South Wales in 1896, that the theory had been referenced by Reverend W. B. Clarke regarding Australia’s climate in 1846. Russell, “On Periodicity of Good and Bad Seasons,” Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 30 (1897): 70–115 (quote, 103).
See also, Richard Gregory, “Weather Recurrences and Weather Cycles,” Monthly Weather Review, 58 no. 12 (December 1930): 483–90, (quote, 485).
Russell, “On Periodicity of Good and Bad Seasons,” 74–100; and, N. Nicholls “Climatic Outlooks: From Revolutionary Science to Orthodoxy,” in A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, ed. T. Sherratt, T. Griffiths, and L. Robin, (Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2005): 19–20.
Don Garden, Droughts, Floods & Cyclones: El Niños That Shaped Our Colonial Past (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009), 1–6; and, Pittock et al., “Climatic Background,” 17–18.
Russell, “Notes upon the History of Floods in the River Darling,” Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 20 (1887): 155–210, (quote, 157).
Charles Egeson, Egeson’s Weather System of Sun-Spot Causality. Being Original Researches in Solar and Terrestrial Meteorology (Sydney: Turner & Henderson, 1889);
F. Halberg et al., “Egeson’s (George’s) Transtridecadal Weather Cycling and Sunspots,” History of Geo- and Space Sciences 1 (2010): 53–57. In his book, Egeson further forecast that this drought would be followed by heavy rainfall in 1893, then another intense drought in 1894–1895.
Halberg et al., “Egeson’s (George’s) Transtridecadal Weather Cycling and Sunspots,” 54. For more on Egeson’s theories and the fallouts from his long-range forecasts see also, G. W. Griffin, “Meteorology in Relation to Water Supply,” in Australia: A Collection of 74 Valuable Articles relating to Exploration, Colonization, Labor and Social Condition, Immigration, Industrial Legislation, Railroads, Naval Defence, etc. Volume 1 (Cleveland, United States of America: n.p., 1919), 389–92.
There is extensive scholarship on this topic. For an overview of these arguments as they related to the Murray and Darling River systems in the late nineteenth century see, O’Gorman, Flood Country, 110–32. For an Australasian perspective that examines arguments in favor of irrigation as well as other schemes for altering environments see, James Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 1800–1920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 150–213.
O’Gorman, Flood Country, 110–32; D. Wright, “The River Murray: Microcosm of Australian Federal History,” in Federalism in Canada and Australia: The Early Years, ed. B. Hodgins, D. Wright, and W. H. Heick (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1978), 277–86;
J. M. Powell, The Emergence of Bioregionalism in The Murray-Darling Basin (Canberra: Murray-Darling Basin Commission, 1993), 63–67;
C. J. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty: Water Development and Management in New South Wales (Parramatta: Department of Water Resources, New South Wales, 1988), 181–83;
and Daniel Connell, Water Politics in the Murray-Darling Basin (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2007), especially 75–76, and 92–95.
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© 2014 James Beattie, Emily O’Gorman, and Matthew Henry
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O’Gorman, E. (2014). “Soothsaying” or “Science?”: H. C. Russell, Meteorology, and Environmental Knowledge of Rivers in Colonial Australia. In: Beattie, J., O’Gorman, E., Henry, M. (eds) Climate, Science, and Colonization. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333933_10
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