“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

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the way in which climate, particularly droughts and floods, affected the very early years of the colony of New South Wales, Australia, between 1788 and 1815. In addition to uncovering the climate events that shaped New South Wales during its first 27 years, this chapter assesses the impacts of these events on the fledgling colony. On their arrival in Australia, the British brought with them a sense of ecological superiority, a confidence in their ability to tame and dominate the environment, and a surety that Australia’s imagined climate could support their subjugation of the land.² Instead, the new arrivals were confronted with a land whose climate proved to be far less sedate than first imagined—and one quite different from the familiar English weather they had anticipated.

The climate and soil are so happily adapted to produce every various and valuable production of Europe, and of both the Indies, that with good management, and a few settlers, in twenty or thirty years they might cause a revolution in the whole system of European commerce, and secure to England a monopoly of some part of it, and a very large share in the whole.¹

James Matra, 1783