The driest ever south east Australia year

摘要

When my maternal grandmother married her first husband, well-V V known Melbourne journalist and cartoonist Samuel Garnet Wells in 1907, her family had just sold their large land-holding after reeling from the effects of a succession of dry seasons. In1914 Wells was a Bombardier member of the Royal Australian Garrison Artillery at Queenscliff, Victoria and was present when the shots were fired that heralded the entry of the British Empire into World War One. While this was a very serious situation for Australia, the drought situation in 1914 was also so serious that the mighty Murray River first stopped running at Swan Hill in April 1914. Then a very dry winter did not do anything to improve things for the rest of the year and well into 1915. Rainfall registration at Tooley-buc, further down stream for 1914 was only 111 millimetres when average rainfall for the district was 325mm.