Drought , Endurance and Climate Change ‘ Pioneers ’ Lived Experience in the Production of Rural Environmental Knowledge

This article explores the politicisation of environmental knowledge on rural Australia, in an analysis of discourse on the lived experience of drought. It draws on research conducted in dryland farm communities in the Mallee wheat-belt of Victoria – where rural histories have presented spirited sagas of community perseverance in ‘battling’ a harsh climate – during a period of marked shift in public awareness of climate change (2004-07). Indeed climate change projections have intensified debate over rural futures in Australia, where droughts have played a powerful role in the mythologizing of rural battlers and landscapes, and where drought discourse has been dominated by the language of war. Cultural engagement with climate is, however, under constant renegotiation, as rural cultural research is apt to reveal.

as the future: in the end, 'a new generation of pioneers', no less, will 'survive' by learning, within country, to 'pull back'. 3A battler history of survival is rewritten withamessageofecologicalenlightenment.
As sociologist Barbara Adam wrote, 'tradition constitutes renewal at every moment of active reconstruction of past beliefs and commitments'. 4The story on which this article builds is a case in point.For in this interconnected narrative of humans and non-human nature 'going somewhere' (change, as environmental historian Donald Worster wrote, 'is never all there is in nature'; change 'leads somewhere, and it has a discernible direction, conventionally called Progress'), 5 a parableofchangebringswithitapotentyearningfortradition.Inturn,thisprompts usasruralculturalresearcherstotakeseriouslythewayssocialandenvironmental risks are inextricably linked, to consider how and why human interpretations of disaster survive because of their usefulness in social and cultural systems. 6This story of drought and climate change is, therefore, even more a story about the makingofstories-ofstorytellingasanexpressionofpoliticsandtime,andofhow narrativefulfilstheideologicalneedsofthemoment.
Here,Idrawuponresearchconductedwithdrylandfarmcommunitiesinthe Mallee wheat-belt of northwest Victoria from 2004 to 2007. 7This was a period of prolonged and recurrent droughts across southeast Australia.Much as droughts in Australia throughout the twentieth century were defined, consistently, as 'unexpectedlysevere'inintensityorduration, 8 in2005thenationwaspronounced assufferingoneoftheworstdroughts'onrecord'-'inourhistory',statedtheprime ministeroftheday. 9Thiswasalsoaperiodofmarkedshiftinpublicawarenessof climate change.And, arguably, climate change projections have intensified debate overruralfuturesinAustralia. 10 Culturalengagementwithclimateisunderconstantrenegotiation,however, as rural cultural research is apt to reveal. 11In the Mallee, I gathered oral histories with twenty-two people, life narratives that reveal the social and cultural dimensionsofclimatechange. 12 Thisarticleexploresthemulti-generationalstoryof justoneofthosenarrativestoexplorethehistoryofideasovertime.Allowingspace for the richness of detail that personal history offers, I have woven in elements of public history and analysis of the ways discourse on lived experience of climate defines and localises the identities of people and place in the production of environmentalknowledge.Inasensethischoiceofresearchmethodwaspragmatic, fordiscourseanalysisisinherentlypolitical;itdrawsattentiontothe'naturalising' functionofdiscourseandthepartial,contingentnatureofknowledgeonclimate.
The concept of 'drought' to which I refer is a cultural term.Its primary connotationsarelessrelatedtorainfallthantoanoverarching,mythicnarrativeof endurance.Insofar as droughts have punctuated Australian rural, regional and national histories, 'drought' has played a prominent role in the ongoing social construction of a 'harsh' and 'unpredictable' climate and in the mythologising of ruralbattlers,shapingfoundationalnarrativesofstruggleandhope. 13n Victoria, the most intensively settled of Australian states, the Mallee in the northwest corner is the most sparsely populated region, with the lowest annual rainfall. 14Incounterpoint,itisanultra-productivistlandscape-aregiondrivenby forces of capital accumulation and engaged in ever-larger-scale industrial agriculture.The Victorian Mallee covers 39,300 square kilometres, or about onesixth of the state. 15Here, 'productive land' is considered 'the backbone of the economy' and about two thousand dryland farmers produce half Victoria's annual cerealscrop,mostlywheat. 16 Uptoonemillionhectaresofthislandputindryland (rain-fed)cropseachyear,'fed'onanannual'average'of200to500millimetresof rain. 17ralhistoriesoftheMalleehaverepresentedspiritedsagasofcommunity struggle, endurance and hope in 'battling' a harsh climate.As environmental historian Tom Griffiths noted, the very word 'Mallee' became 'synonymous for heroic, even bloody-minded settlement'. 18'Settled' from the mid-1800s with the establishmentandsubsequentcollapseofpastoralism,theregionwas'openedup'in the wholesale clearing of mallee forest and advance of dryland agriculture in the twentiethcentury.Europeanoccupationofthesemi-aridMalleehasbeennarrated predominantly as an ongoing struggle on a frontier beset by environmental extremes,'wherecopingwithdisastrousdroughtwaspartofthepioneerlifestyle'. 19deed, Mallee local histories form dedications to those pioneers, 'who succeeded becausetheyneveradmitteddefeat'. 20y contrast, the region's name derives from bushland considered to local Indigenouspeopleasasupporteroflifebecauseofthewaterinmalleeroots. 21The term'mallee'isappliedtoeucalyptswithamulti-stemmedhabit;atthebaseofthe stemsisawoodystructureorlignotuberthatenablesvegetativerecoveryafterfire or other ecological stress. 22Invading Europeans deemed this bushland 'useless scrub' (a form of linguistic overkill, given in Australian English the term 'scrub' alreadydenotesplantspeciesliabletobeconstructedasoflittlevalue). 23Examples of contemporary Mallee tourism retain a fixation with the historical idea that, by extension, Mallee country was regarded as 'useless', 24 but this (dis)regard speaks alsooftheforceofcolonialandproductivistregimessinceappliedtoit.Profoundly, inasmuch as 'Mallee' serves as a geographical marker, it is a placename founded uponabsence. 25TheMalleemarksthesiteoftheveryclearanceofthree-quartersof the original mallee lands. 26This is country where the mallee once grew.Today to gazeoutacrossMalleecountryis,onoccasion,toseenomalleeatall.HubieSheldon,organicbroad-acrewheatfarmer,2005 27 Sheep scatter in a wheat stubble-lined paddock, where someone's predecessors barely a century ago rolled and burned their block of mallee 'scrub'.Today in late summeritisastrikingpanorama,boldinmagnitudeyetsubtleincolour.Sandhills slopeawayintoavast,silentexpansewhereconvergingplough-linesforcetheeye to traverse seemingly endless layers of white-beige, tan-orange and rust-pink.Skirtingthefencesattheedgeofthesevastcroppingbeds,hemmedinlikeremnant pocketsofreprieve,aredark-olivethicketsofnativemalleebush.
It'sthirty-ninedegrees,it'sFebruary,andearlierinthedayIhadembarked onwhatfeltlikeadrivetotheendofEarthtoreachNgallo-pronounced'ne-gallo' and meaning 'a spring'-a blip on the map of Victoria's semi-arid northwest. 28I admit,bythehourIreachHubieSheldon'sfarmmythoughtshaveturnedtocolonial engineer Alfred Kenyon's infamous account of 'sand, scrub and mallee below, the scorching sun and bright blue sky above, and not a sound to break the solemn silence'. 29Suchwordsformedthenarrativebed,sotospeak,forhis1912Storyofthe Mallee: a pioneering battle saga of men with 'hearts like lions', new methods and ever-more-advanced machines who would make this country 'profitably productive'. 30Unlike Kenyon with his oratory (or this researcher with her voice recorder),thisistheplaceSheldoncallshome.HereonaMalleebroad-acrewheat-sheeppropertyiswhereSheldonlivesonhisownandwherehehasspentmostof his life, as did his father and mother before him, and his father's parents before them, having selected and cleared their block of sand and clay country in 1910.
Acrossanoldkitchentable,Sheldonbeginshisstory. GregBrown,conventionalbroad-acrewheatfarmer/councillor,2005 33 Sheldon is the only member of his family left farming in the Mallee.As a child, he attendedschoolinthenearbytownofMurrayville.Yetitwasfarmlabourandideas ontheeducationalvalueoffarmfamilialworkthatgoverneddiscourseonchildhood inSheldon'shistory(andanethicsofwork,asameansofknowingnature,prevailed in his contemporary farm life too).There was no television at home when he was young;anyway,hewasexpectedtohelpoutonthefarm:'TheOldManwasalways one to keep you busy … You get out and you do something to earn your keep … teaches you values early on.' 34 He completed form five in 1977, after which he continued working at home on the farm.Then under his father's management, the property operated on a conventional three-year crop rotation with sheep, fallow (therepeatedtillingofsoil,inpreparationforsowing)andcrop.Hisfatherhaddied in 1985, aged seventy-five, from emphysema caused by inhaling dust while harvesting clover seed in the 1950s and '60s.But the Old Man (also a 'Hubie'), as well as 'a couple of uncles', retained prominent roles in Sheldon's discourse on settlerMalleehistoryandclimate. 35Thesemenfiguredasprimarystorytellersinthe tales of life on the land that he'd heard as a child, which centred upon periods in Ngallo district history of environmental calamity and market failure.Those stories beganwhentheSheldonpropertywasstillnot'properlydeveloped': Whatmeparentshavetoldmeinregardstothisdistricthere…Theyhad the1914drought,whichwasacalmdrought.Welltherewasonestory,it didn't even blow enough wind to turn the windmills to get water for the horses,sotheyhadtoputaropeonthewheelandpullthewheeloverand thatwasajobpeoplehadtodo,pumpwater… AndthenthroughtheFirstWorldWarerarightthroughtheearly'20s,the districtbasicallyhadaboom.Therewasgoodseasonsoneaftertheother, no hassles, and prices were good, everything looked rosy and then, the firstbaderosionyearwas1927-plusitwasadroughtysortofayear,and aswellasarabbitplague,whichasmefatherexplainedorshowedme,he saidwhentherabbitswerebadtheycouldeattenchaininsidefromaroad …'Itwouldbeeatendown,'hesaid,'likefallow'…Andhesaideverywhere youlooked,therewasdust. 36 Rapid change to a semi-arid landscape had not come without consequence, and Sheldon's story of the Mallee began to form the shape of an evocative, if absurd, narrativeofendurance,inwhichpeoplesurvivedphysicalandeconomicextremes: Andthen1928wasagoodseasonandeveryonethought'ohwellit'sgone'.
And then '29 come and the same thing happened and he said, 'Well that was a quadrella then.You had the dust and the erosion and the wind, as wellastherabbits,aswellasthere'dbeenamouseplaguefromthegood harvestof'28,andthentheDepressionhit.' So, yeah, that tested people out.I mean, if you stayed in the Mallee then, youwereserious.
[grins] 37 Indeed,thetriumphalismofMalleelandsettlementabatedinthe1930swhen,amid economic strife, the region experienced dust 'monsters' attributed to massive land clearance, soil tillage and drought. 38As Griffiths writes, 'Many farmers were overwhelmed by this environmental disaster, and families abandoned their homes andholdingsinthemiddleofthenight,unabletofacetheneighbourswhostayed'. 39atexperienceofdisasterwroughtaneraofpublicandbureaucraticconcernover environmentalproblems,culminatingintheestablishmentoftheSoilConservation Board in 1940. 40Meantime, in the press, Mallee, dust, salt and wind came to form the discursive markers of a counter-narrative of colonial presence.'Is the Mallee BlowingAway?'posedaheadlineinTheAustralasianinJanuary1941,forexample. 41lleesoilshadbeen'badlytreated'bysettlers,thatreportcited:overstockingwith sheepandcattle,rapidexpansionoflandcultivation,'badseasons'andgovernment advice to 'grow more and more wheat' had all contributed to unprecedented soil drift.With'millionsoftaxpayers'fundssunkintheruins',Victoriawasinjeopardyof becoming 'a menacing dust bowl'. 42The Mallee, as both physical and cultural site, was being constructed as having fallen victim to processes of excess through a 'lexiconofconsequence'-which,asculturalhistorianJ.M.Arthurhaspointedout,is how problems associated with dust, wind and salt have been represented in dominantAustraliandiscourseonenvironment. 43e notion that environmental destruction could be pinned on an ignorant peoplewasaninadequatesummationofsettlerregardforthelandorknowledgeof itslimits,however.AshistorianWorsterarguedinhishistoryoftheAmericanDust Bowl-Depression era, which, similarly, spanned the 1930s, capitalism has been a decisive factor in agricultural exploitation: 'We speak of farmers and plows on the plains and the damage they did,' he wrote, 'but the language is inadequate.What brought them to the region was a social system, a set of values, an economic order.' 44 Further, as Tim Bonyhady argued in his episodic work of Australian environmentalhistory,TheColonialEarth,peoplecanknowmuchaboutland-and still damage it.Bonyhady advocated a more complicated version of the past, for 'it was largely through the detail of what Australians depicted, said, and did that one couldseehowtheyoccupiedtheland,bothimaginativelyandphysically'. 45Onthat note, Sheldon's retelling of this period of Mallee history-a mediation of lived experience-sentimentalised the value of backbreaking labour and of family and communityendurance.Thisserved,asweshallsee,asbothculturalcapitalandan historicalbackdropforchange,iflocalisedredemption.
Sheldon's story of 'Mallee survival' continued through an agricultural cycle ofboomandbust:wherethe1930swere'reasonableseasons',inthe1940sdrought returned;inthedroughtof1944,therewassomeerosionagain,butthat'broke'in the start of 1945 and 'the weather pattern opened up' once more. 46From the late 1960s, Sheldon's history shifted into an era of personal recollection-of what he remembered 'in his time'.Dust storms marked his recollection of the drought of 1967:'Iwasonlyalittlekid,Icanrememberacouplapaddockshereblewabit.' 47 And then, 'o'course', he said, he couldn't forget the summer of 1983.As connoted, drought in the early 1980s came to be viewed as a defining period for dryland agriculture in the Mallee, when socioeconomic hardship peaked.Widespread crop failure, declining world prices for wheat and, significantly, skyrocketing interest ratescombinedtocreate'amostdifficultperiod'fordebt-ladenMalleefarmersand farmcommunities. 48Farmlivelihoodscrumbled.Families,marriagesandindividual lives 'fell apart'.A throwaway line in a 1989 report by the University of New England'sRuralDevelopmentCentreindicatedthedegreeofhumandespair:'Given thesituationintheMallee[by]late1985,virtuallyanyactiontakenwouldhaveled to some improvement in the community's wellbeing.' 49And, as Sheldon's story reveals, the 1980s drought came to signify not only Mallee crisis but also an environmentalbattleground: Itlookedshocking,youknow,attheendofFebruary [1983]andyouwere wonderin' how much worse is it gonna get.I mean a lotta paddocks that werepastureweregougedoutinstrips,wheresheephadwalked…looked likethere'dbeenawarfoughtthere. 50-UNCERTAINTY I think that maybe some of the farmers are really frightened … They're strugglingnowtotryandkeeptheirheadsabovewaterfinanciallyand… they don't want to hear more doom and gloom … While there's 'doubt' thereaboutglobalwarming,they'lltakeit.
LynneHealy,women'shealthworker,2006 54 There'sdoubtstartingtocomeintoit,whetherit'sreallyworthdoingwhat we're doing.Because really, if it-the drought of '06-happens again in '07,Iwouldprettyconfidentlysay…theagegroupofbetween25and35 probablywon'tbehereintwoyears.BrentMorrish,harvestingcontractor/conventional broad-acrewheatfarmer,2007 55 Social anthropologists on several continents and in varied cultural contexts have argued that lived experience, and the memory of it, strongly shapes farmers' interpretationsofclimate. 56Asonestudyintohowfarmersusedlocalandscientific informationonclimateconcluded,farmers'interpretationswere'anchoredintheir remembrance of desirable or dreaded situations they lived through, their observations about the conditions that brought them about, and their assessments ofhowtheymanagedthroughthem'. 57Sheldon'soralhistorylendsplentyofweight to that precis-most significantly, perhaps, when his story drifted from past to present, when he began to depict the experience of dwelling in agro-industrial uncertainty.Arguably, in the late twentieth century Australian farmers became 'chained' to a treadmill of corporate dependency, technological change and productivism. 58GeographerGeoffreyLawrencehaspointedtotheuseofchemicals in agriculture as a prime example of this.He writes: 'the faster chemicals are applied,themoretheywillbeneededinthefuture:thefasteragricultureutilisesthe corporatestrategyofagribusiness,thegreatertheentirecommunity'srelianceupon thatstrategyanduponthosecorporationsbecomes'. 59Lawrencenotedthe'illogical' foundations on which that strategy was based, including its dependency on nonrenewable resources (fossil fuels) and its potentially damaging impacts on food products,thepeoplewhoeatthem,andtheagriculturalecosystemproducingthem too. 60eldon's narrative of his life on the land produced a troubling contemplation of this 'agricultural modernity', of the rise of intensified and monocultural cereal cropping practices, aided by modified crop breeds and a nearautonomous technological advance.Further, talking about this era prompted a reflexive assessment of the dependency of agricultural communities on the conditions of the production treadmill, that is, of how such dependency had reshaped drought 'survival'.And, at this point of Sheldon's story, historical awareness of the harmful impacts of agri-capitalism upon the Mallee environment was expressed as a desire to learn how to read country better-for, as environmentalhistorianRichardWhitewrote:'Aconnectionwiththelandthrough work creates knowledge, but it does not necessarily grant protection to the land itself.' 61 In the decade to 1985, the Sheldons had cropped some of their ground 'hard'. 62Through soil tillage, or 'working the ground' on a system of 'good early fallow', Sheldon said his father 'could tend to be a little bit over-keen': 'He used to getitdriftin'-there'snodenyin'that.' 63 Whenhisfatherpassedaway,Sheldonhad turnedtwenty-five.'I'vejuststayedwiththefour-squaremileo'landthatwehadthere'sroughly 2500 acres [about 1000 hectares]-and stayed with simple machinery from mid-1960s'. 64That said, the property was to undergo significant changeunderSheldon'snew'management'.Hestartedexperimentingwithwaysto get clover, which had been farmed, fallowed and sprayed out over the years, back intohispaddocksforsoilhealth. 65Thenhebegantolookintochemical-freefarming.'Ireadalittlebookaboutorganicsatthebeginningof'92,'hesaid.'Afewthingsin that little book … twigged the imagination a bit and I thought well, you know, I'll have a go at this.' 66 Sheldon said he began to rethink his farm as part of an ecosystemic whole.In the context of his shift to organic agriculture, he portrayed uncertainty over the sustainability of conventional dryland farming.In that portrayal, not only were dominant agricultural monocultures destroying the conditionsfordiversespeciestoexist;dominantknowledgewasdestroyingthevery conditionsforalternativestoexist.
First, he realised he had to 'slow it down': his ideas of sustainability were embeddedindiscourseon'easingoff'and'pullingback'.Thiswasadeclinenarrative of decelerating progress to create a more environmentally sound agriculture.This version of an antimodern environmental declinism was founded upon questioning thespeed,sizeandintensityofmodernisingprocesses(techno-scientificactivity)in late capitalist agriculture. 67It also questioned scale and complexity in place and identity-makingprocesses.'Theonlywaythingscanreallygetbacktohowitcould be sustainable?'Sheldon proffered: 'You gotta have smaller holdings with people that are really interested in what they're doing.' 68 In contrast to contemporary, prevailing, neoliberal discourse of agricultural and economic vulnerability that focuses on issues of scale (smaller farms are considered more vulnerable to the hazards of climate, much as global economic forces are perceived increasingly as determining futures for local people) Sheldon advocated 'smallness' in agricultural holdingsandmachinery,and'simplicityasbest'. 69eldon explicitly linked the increased use of chemicals in agriculture to technological change that superseded human labour, thus, to the loss of social capital in the Mallee.Sheldon pointed out what he'd heard was happening in the WesternAustraliangrain-belt.There,earlierthaninnorthwestVictoria,farmershad takenonzero-tillagepractices-awayofgrowingcropsfromyeartoyearwithout disturbing the soil through tillage, thus increasing the amount of water in the soil, decreasingerosionandyet,paradoxically,significantlyincreasingherbicideusageas ameanstoadapttodrierclimaticconditions: A lot of farmers around here are going zero-till and all spraying [herbicides].That'llrunitscourse.Thesystem'sbreakingdowninWestern Australianowalready...They'regoingbacktotillage.Alotofdamagewill bedoneinthemeantime. 70 While agri-scientific expertise and farming lived experience were considered both valid but inherently partial in the formation of a broader social-environmental knowledge, Sheldon believed the widespread shift toward zero-tillage practices (whicharecurrentlyadvocatedbyfarmingsoilconservationgroups,backedbystate and federal government funding, as a key means of achieving greater agricultural sustainability in the Mallee) by conventional farmers was effectively 'replacing peoplewithaboomspray'.'Wewanttokeepitsimpleandkeepsomepeopleinthedistrict,'hesaid,'ratherthanjustgetbigger.' 71 Thus,Sheldonhistoricisedtheriseofagriculturalscienceandtechnologyin terms of community decline and the de-industrialisation of agricultural practices, counteringthecapacityofcapitalismtoreconstructlandscapesasexchangevalues underprofitimperatives.'The"getbigorgetout"era',hesaidofthelatetwentieth century,waswhen'realchange'occurredintheMallee:'Manyoftheearlyfarmers got out then.'And farms did get big-up to twenty thousand acres, in parts.
Meanwhile,however:'Allyoursmallclubs,wholecommunity,fallstobits…It'sthe old story: if you keep replacing people with machinery, don't need any people eventually.' 72 In the meantime, based on his assessment of environmental risk, Sheldon had sought to reduce and eventually eliminate his dependence on the chemical materialsofmainstreamagriculture.Fromthisemergedaperceptionofsocialrisk and a communitarian aim-of strong communities amid uncertainty-that was premised on nostalgic renditions of a more populated rural past.This implied that somemoremutualistic,cooperative(mythic)versionofcommunityexistedpriorto the 'get big or get out' era of the preceding three decades, as agricultural 'restructuring'reshapedtheAustraliancountryside.Drivingthisvisionofa'return' tobiggerruralcommunitieswasthatofgoing'back'togreaterrelianceuponhuman labour.Also, this stressed the significance of dwelling in meaningful work, which critically framed Sheldon's ideas on agricultural sustainability in the Mallee-and circumscribed his vision of a Mallee future under conditions of climate change.
JimMaynard,MalleeSustainableFarmingchairman/ conventionalbroad-acrewheatfarmer,2007 75 Thespringof2006,inparticular,broughtadramaticshiftinAustraliandiscourseon climate, which was linked to Australians' contemporary experience of the weather andunderlinedthepowerofpopularcultureasamediumformainstreamscience. 76 2007, as a survey of Australian attitudes to climate change reported, the 'vast majority'ofAustraliansnolongerdoubtedclimatechangewas'real'orattributable to human activity that caused greenhouse gases. 77The report concluded: 'Water and that sorta weather in the '60s and the '70s … or in the '80s for that matter. 79ttoSheldon,farmingintheMalleewasanongoing'learningexperience'.Asoneof morethanfifteenhundredcertifiedorganicfarmsinAustralia,whichcoveredabout 1.7 per cent of Australia's agricultural area in 2003, 80 his home formed a site of possibility-not for the kind of growth, development or risk-taking manifest in dominant agri-capitalist outlooks, but for renewing relations to place.In light of climate change, rather than seek a technological fix, he stressed the need to keep learning to 'adapt yourself and your lifestyle to that country, and try and get a consistentpatternyearafteryear': That's the critical balance that I feel that we do need to really learn as drylandfarmersinthecountry,iswhatwecandooveralongperiodand not have to think: 'Oh well, we've had a drought, we've gotta crop the whole lot next year and hope like hell we get a big season to get outta trouble.'It'sabitlikeanythinginlife-ifyoucangetconsistencyintoyourpattern,you'llgoalotfurtherthanhavingboomorbustallthetime. 81 was in that context of conditions under climate change that Sheldon envisioned thefuture: We'reprobablygonnahavetochangethewaywedothingssoonerrather thanlater.Andonceagain,it'llbesomethingthat'llhavetobedoneatan individuallevel…It'llbeanewgenerationofpioneers,roughly.Wewon't havetoclearthelandandworkwithhorsesandbustourguts,but…we'll haveto…haveamodestlifestyleandbepreparedtoputafairbitofwhat yourfarmmakesbackintochangingit.That'stheonlywayit'llhappen. 82re discourses of endurance, uncertainty and adaptation appear to collide.This was an interpretation of farming environment in which climatic uncertainty and pioneering struggle served as defining features, which proffered a means of 'adapting' to a changing Mallee climate-where tradition helps constitute renewal.
In this regard, his was a political (moral) discourse of observing socialenvironmental 'limits', and of revaluing labour in the relations of nature and livelihood.Concurrently, that interpretation of life under conditions of climate changeservedtoamplifyalocalidentity-andplace-baseddiscourseofMalleehope and endurance.Anchored in remembrance of droughts, and the assessment of having managed to endure, Sheldon's discourse on 'climate change pioneers' returnedtodrawinguponsettler-descendentculturalcapital-acollectivehistoryof survival.
-The cultural renegotiation of climate is tied to the imagining of landscapes; conversely, as this article argues, the historical discursive delimitation of drought hasbeeneverybitmaterialasithasbeenconsequential.Sheldon'sstory,anaccount oftheexperienceofdwellinginuncertainty,formedanactivereconstructionofthe pastinabidforrenewal-acompellingbidtoretraditionaliseasocialenvironment thatdrewattentiontoexistentialcrisisasruralchange(socio-economic,structural, politicalandenvironmental)posedathreattotheidentityofMalleedrylandfarming people. 83Certainly, insofar as this paper sheds light on an affirmation of and challenge to a narrative of rural 'pioneering' in light of climate change, drought discoursesattesttothepowerandpervasivenessofbattlerhistoriesofendurancein Australianruralculture.Perhapsinsomerespects,however,perceptionsofclimate change(globalistideasperse)arecomplicatingtheveryideaof'droughts'havingan end (or a beginning).Yet a survivor narrative does assume a stable self can be recovered.Inthefaceofchange,Sheldon'soralhistoryconjuredagrandnarrativeof cultural and physical processes acting together to determine or block the path to survival.Hisideasrepresentedaformofresistance,foundedonprinciplesofmutual aid,simplicity,directactionanddecentralisation,andhisorganicfarm'plan'wasa kind of limited farming 'utopia of reconstruction' that sought to renew specific, creativerelationshipsbetweenhumansandnon-humans. 84Hisstorybegantotouch upontheformationofabiologicalmodel,alessoninenvironmentalhistory.Inthe end, Sheldon's story was about an Australian environment and his changing relationship to it, his conversation with it, if you will, as much as it was about a collectiveconversation: When you look at Australia and its history … while we've been here a coupl'a hundred years, we've probably only really developed the country inthelasthundred,andmoreparticularlyinthelastfifty.Sothat'savery, very brief time.And we've altered this landscape a hell of a lot in a short periodo'time.
And if that's gonna change our weather patterns-which it, well, it looks like it is-we need to look at what we've done in the past and try and learn. 85eb Anderson's interests lie in rural, environmental and cultural studies.She is workingonaPhDattheUniversityofMelbourne;shealsoworksforthepress.Deb lives in the city's political greenbelt but home is still the family farm on which she grewup,inthesticksofnorthQueensland.<deanderson@theage.com.au>-ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ThisresearchwasconductedonprojectsponsoredbytheUniversityofMelbourneandMuseum Victoria.TheauthorwishestothankHubieSheldon,whosestoriesformthecoreofthispaper,CSR editorsandrefereesfortheircomments,andWendyandDavidAnderson,AnetaPodkalickaandTom Bamforthforawealthofideasandencouragement. -NOTES
WhatImeanby'forgiving':youcan'tbeltyourcountryandexpectitjustto come back.And when I say 'belt it': crop it and crop it and crop it and expect it to keep giving … the country can look fairly crook after a prolonged period of dry weather, but you don't need huge amounts of rainfall for this country to really blossom … It's good country as long as youworkwithinthelimitsofwhatitcando. 73-ADAPTATION Wearemoreculturallydeterminedtonotbesatisfiedwithstopping…It's a kind of grotty Darwinian way to think about things … It's a global problemthatrequireseconomicengineering…Icanseesomanysignsof humanevolutionatworkintheeconomyandsomanysignsofeconomyin humanevolution.