Overview

Living with drought is one of the biggestissues of our times.  Climate change scenarios suggest that in the next fiftyyears global warming will increase both the frequency and severity of thesephenomena. Stories of drought are familiar to us, accompanied by images of deadsheep, dry dams, cracked earth, farmers leaving their lands, and rural economicstagnation. Drought is indeed a catastrophe, played out slowly. But as RebeccaJones reveals in this sensitive account of families living on the Australianland, the story of drought in this driest continent is as much aboutresilience, adaptation, strength of community, ingenious planning for, andcreative responses to, persistent absences of rainfall.  The histories of eightfarming families, stretching from the 1870s to the 1950s, are related, with afocus on private lives and inner thoughts, revealed by personal diaries. The storyis brought up to the present with the author's discussions with contemporaryfarmers and pastoralists. In greatly enriching our understanding of the humandimensions of drought, Slow Catastrophes provides us with vital resources toface our ecological future. Featured in The Weekly Times here. 

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9781925495430

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Rebecca Jones is an environmental historian in the School of History and Centre for Environmental History at the Australian National University. She is author of Green Harvest: a History of Organic Farming and Gardening in Australia and has published widely in environmental history, Australian history and on rural health and wellbeing.

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