I still call Australia home and refuge, Natural disasters in Australia, Drought

Drought: Australia experiences a range of 'natural disasters' including bushfires, floods, severe storms, earthquakes and landslides. These events cause great financial hardship for individuals and communities, and can result in loss of life, which has become part of Australian folklore.

However, these events are also considered both part of the natural cycle of weather patterns in Australia as well as being affected by human factors such as overstocking, vegetation loss, dams, groundwater and irrigation schemes. These patterns are recognised by terms such as a 100-year drought - a drought of severity that is only seen once in a hundred years. Fire can often follow drought, and drought can be followed by flood. Severe fires followed by drought can also contribute to soil erosion.

The experience of natural disaster has come to be seen as part of the Australian national character as described in the poem 'My Country' by Dorothea McKellar (1904).

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror - the wide brown land for me!

Drought:A drought is a prolonged, abnormally dry period when there is not enough water for users' normal needs. Drought is not simply low rainfall; if it was, much of inland Australia would be in almost perpetual drought. Because people use water in so many different ways, there is no universal definition of drought.
Australia has experienced two significant '100-year droughts' in the last 100 or so years as well as others not described here. These major droughts have resulted in financial losses, personal hardship and environmental damage. In Western New South Wales and west Darling areas, the 1895 Federation Drought was exacerbated by heavy overstocking, and the arrival of rabbits which crossed the Murray River into western New South Wales in 1881 and reached plague proportions. Overstocking caused widespread severe erosion and increased the effects of the drought.

The 'Federation Drought', 1895-1902

In the five years leading up to Federation in January 1901, there were intermittent dry spells throughout Australia. By spring 1901, very dry conditions were being experienced across all of eastern Australia. Rivers in western Queensland dried up and the Darling River almost ran dry at Bourke in New South Wales. Murray River towns such as Mildura, Balranald and Deniliquin, which depended on the river for transport, suffered badly.

During this drought there was extended use of stock routes in Western New South Wales and the opening up of new stock routes to take advantage of 'native wells' with consequent evaporation of the wells. Together with engineering of irrigation schemes along the Murray-Darling River, the consequences were salinity problems and a rabbit plague (Bobbie Hardy, Lament for the Barkindji, Rigby Press, 1976).

1982-83

In 1982-83, large areas of central and eastern - particularly south-eastern - Australia experienced unprecedented low rainfall levels. This was the culmination of the four-year drought that had begun in 1979. It is estimated that the total cost to the economy was around $A7 billion. Agricultural losses, such as the death of livestock, resulted in massive job losses in rural areas. The effects of the drought contributed to the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires across Victoria and South Australia (see below).

1991-95

This drought in north-eastern New South Wales and much of Queensland, was the result of the lowest rainfall levels on record. A number of major water reservoirs went dry and many others fell to critically low levels. Average rural production fell by over 10 per cent and rural unemployment rose. Loss to the economy is estimated at around $A5 billion.

2002-06

Eastern and southern Australia is once again experiencing widespread drought, with agricultural income in 2006-07 expected to be at the lowest level since 1994-95.