the most famous droughts in Australia? [urgent]?

Question

what are the most famous droughts that have occured in australia in the past few years?

please help

Answer 1

Check out this site
http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/drought.htm
Hope this helps

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
the most famous droughts in Australia? [urgent]?
what are the most famous droughts that have occured in australia in the past few years?

please help

Answer 3

The drought rite now. Victoria is facing deep **** because melbourne retards like to hose their driveways.

Answer 4

Warnings current in:
Queensland,
South Australia,
Tasmania,
Victoria,
Western Australia.
Australia Facing Worst Drought for 1000 Years
The irony continues as those who shun action on climate change are suffering the most from climate change.

Along with the United States, Australia has suffered a major drought this year, “the worst for 1000 years.” Australia and the U.S. are the only two industrialized countries that have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Australia already has an arid climate, but the recent drought is having a devastating effect on water resources. It has also taken its toll on the economy, significantly slowing Australia’s growth since so much of the country’s GDP relies on agriculture.
Hopefully Australia will see the value and urgency in taking climate action before the last puddle dries up, since unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions are projected to accelerate drought and desertification.

Here is a news from 2006 in Australia hope it helps


December 30, 2006

SOME say this is Australia's worst drought in 1000 years. This idea has grown long legs, jumped around the nation and might never quite be brought to heel. That's the trouble with some ideas. They so capture the imagination that they have no need for facts.
No evidence has been produced to support this theory which somehow escaped, as a wild runaway, from the special water summit held in Canberra last month. Of course, this Australian drought is serious and a source of human misery. But is it really the drought of the past millennium? The Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which has earned a strong reputation internationally, thinks it wisest to extend the nationwide rainfall record only as far back as 1900. Historically that cut-off date is a pity because it excludes most years of a drought that was already severe.
From that long period of reliable records since 1900, a surprising fact emerges. While much of the television news makes us think, in this phase of rising temperatures, that Australia is in a uniquely dry period, it is not. The most arid years have not arrived with the present phase of warming. The years of lowest rainfall were 1902 and 1905, at the end of the Federation Drought. Will this climatically nervous year shatter these old records for meagre rainfall? The answer, even before 2006 is completed, has to be "no". In Australia as a whole this is not a drought year in 1000. It is probably not even a drought year in 10.

Our collective memory has forgotten how dry was the period during and after the long Federation Drought. Counting the deserts as well as the dairy lands, Australia received less rainfall during the first half of the 20th century than has fallen in the most recent half-century. There were numerous droughts between 1895 and 1950. In contrast, the wetter years came thereafter, the wettest being 1974. It is strange to contemplate that 2000 was Australia's second-wettest year on record. Admittedly a nationwide summary of rainfall does mask the acute regional variations. Furthermore, that summary does not reveal whether a lot of a year's rainfall was slow and soaking or fell in a cloudburst. But the nationwide average is still a vital statistic in an era when for the first time people are encouraged to look at the weather on a wide, even a world scale.

Somehow, word has spread that global warming inevitably means less rain all around. As a result, the whole of Australia is thought to be suffering. But it is not. In this drought, as in the Federation Drought, some regions in the tropics have been unusually wet. The amount of tropical rainwater running out to sea this year has been massive.

Today's drought, miserable as it is for the rural victims, is not the most damaging, the most painful, in Australia's history. What counts is not the raw records of poor rainfall but the total impact of a drought. In the earlier era when this nation relied heavily on its rural industries, it was more vulnerable to drought than is today's multisided economy.

As recently as the 1930s, the primary industries formed the biggest sector of the economy, even being ahead of manufacturing. Rural industries were huge employers, provided far more than half of the nation's exports and were the lifeblood of the railways, which dominated the state budgets. Farms provided hay and fodder, a main fuel for city transport in the era of the horse. Therefore a drought, by crippling these all-important rural industries, inflicted severe hardships on the cities as well as the countryside.

The Federation Drought, running roughly from 1894 to 1902, dwarfed today's drought in economic terms. The mighty wool industry, more important than mining is today, was crippled by drought and, to a smaller degree, falling prices. NSW in 1891 pastured 62 million sheep, but in the following 10 years that figure was halved. Queensland lost nearly two-thirds of its cattle. The economic effect on rural towns, and even on many Brisbane businesses, was crushing.

The Federation Drought was disappointing, partly because a generation had come to believe that much of its country was relatively reliable for grazing. They had heard such statisticians as Henry Hayter of Melbourne proclaim that there was no limit to the cattle and sheep that could feed contentedly in this continent.

Yancannia, west of the Darling, was one of the huge sheep stations that displayed the defiant new climate. In 1887 the station held a record flock of 171,000 sheep, though there was a tendency to overstock. Then the seasons turned turtle. For the 14 years to 1890 the rainfall averaged 12 inches (about 305mm), but for the next 20 years it averaged just over seven inches, much of which fell in cloudbursts. In the 1890s alone the sheep numbers fell by two-thirds, though the rabbits did not. The old wool port of Wilcannia, as a local historian noted, "was left without even the few inches that would float a paddle-boat". Most of that huge district fell officially into the hands of the receivers, namely banks and finance companies. In contrast, no bank today is heavily weighed down by the burden of worthless rural properties.

Many pastoralists tried to move their flocks and herds to distant regions offering some grass and water. The sides of many bush roads, however, were soon littered with animal bones. In 1899 near Rockhampton, 11,000 sheep died on one short journey.

The drought was so severe that nearly all traffic on many outback roads was halted. Typically, the policeman at Innamincka reported that a teamster had been on his way from Farina but so many of his 84 horses had died that he was forced to abandon the three wagons. That was even before the drought became acute.

On some sheep stations there was no shearing at the appointed time because the shearers could not get through. In others there was no work because the sheep had died. In 1901 the protector of Aborigines for west Queensland travelled 1600km and found even the wildlife had largely vanished. He counted seven bustards, five kangaroos and one emu during that long journey.

The camels took over much of the carrying as the drought intensified. In at least half of the nation the camel became the main carrier. In 1963 I interviewed a man who had become a camel teamster at the back of Marble Bar a half-century previously. He said the far outback "would have broken down" but for the camels.

The year 1902 was possibly the worst experienced by wheat farmers. In the two big wheat-exporting states, NSW and Victoria, the yield was pathetic. For a time, much of the flour used in Australian bakeries came from Indian, Brazilian, Argentinian and especially American wheat.

Towards the end of that drought a young NSW poet, Dorothea Mackellar, wrote verses that became almost a nationalist war cry for a later generation. She affirmed, "I love a sunburnt country". While declaring her affections she was also making a revolutionary statement in the eyes of many farmers struggling to make a living. They did not want a sunburnt country.

The cities, most of them, suffered from the Federation Drought. They coped largely because, by today's standards, they consumed little water. About three of every four houses in Australia had no sewerage. At a guess, two of every three Australians bathed only once a week, and family members used the same water, one after the other. City residents did not expect to water their lawns in a drought, while their vegetable gardens - more extensive than in today's back yards - were often watered with a bucket.

It may be argued that the drought would have been less harmful if there had been a mining boom like ours. In fact, extending from Mt Lyell in Tasmania to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and Charters Towers in Queensland, a vigorous mining boom was bubbling alongside the drought.

That boom was not enough to tint the overall picture, for the inescapable fact was that Australia's economy depended, then more than now, on adequate rains. Today Australia has prosperity alongside a severe drought. In 1900 that combination was impossible.

This is one of the stark differences between that drought and this. The economy today is so buoyant that governments can afford to pay for drought relief - more than has been so far given. During the Federation Drought there was little money to pay for drought relief.

Though the total Australian economy had been hit by the bank crashes in 1893 and by falling commodity prices in the next few years, the long drought deepened and prolonged the Depression. Europeans did not wish to emigrate to such a drought-stricken land. In the 10 years from 1896, Australia's net gain from migration averaged a pitiful 500 people a year. Once the drought was over, immigration soared.

Such a punitive drought spurred a crusade to build large reservoirs to supply cities, towns and farms. It led to a new emphasis on irrigation. That great national era of dam-building finally came to an end around 1980, after multiplying the available water a thousandfold. This present drought in the cities and large parts of the farming country is more manageable because of what earlier Australians constructed.

It is very difficult to compare even the bare statistics of droughts since each has a different shape and longevity. As a broad generalisation, this drought in most farming areas has run for only two-thirds of the time of the Federation Drought: say five years compared to eight or nine years. But this drought is persisting.

In Victoria this drought is entrenched, having commenced about nine years ago. But it is still too early to say whether, measured in rainfall alone, it is worse than the drought of 1894-1902. Significantly, Victoria has experienced many of its dry years during this latest half-century, and 2006 is likely to be one of its worst. Perth, like Melbourne, has its own pattern, and its recent run of dry years has been long.

The huge Murray-Darling Basin, the most productive rural area on the continent, has been hit particularly hard by this drought. This year the overall rainfall across the basin is not quite as low as in 1902 but the runoff into the Murray River is much lower. Here is the heartland of the present drought, indeed of several earlier droughts.

Maybe the majority of climate scientists are pessimistic about Australia's future climate. Public opinion has caught this mood, less perhaps from the scientists than from the way the radio and TV media condense and package the daily news. Public opinion believes that global warming and Australian droughts go hand in hand. Therefore the public will be surprised to learn that, across Australia as a whole, this year will not go down as one of extremely low rainfall.

The past 15 years of rising temperatures have not been a period of exceptional water scarcity. Ours is not the 15-year period receiving the lowest rainfall: that record belongs to the Federation Drought and its aftermath. On the other hand, the loss of water through evaporation is probably higher than in 1900, though there are no nationwide statistics to confirm this.

This drought, with its bushfires, is formidable. More important, it is not yet over. But this is no justification for exaggerating its magnitude. The Federation Drought, in its social and economic impact on the nation, was far more devastating. That verdict will probably remain true, even if this drought continues for several years.

Geoffrey Blainey is an author and historian. His books include The Tyranny of Distance, Triumph of the Nomads and A Short History of the World. He has been professor of economic history and history at the University of Melbourne, and chaired the Australia Council.