On the home front Australians and the 1914 drought

This chapter focuses on Western Australia, where the 1914 drought contributed to one of the driest years on the state's record and lingers as a meteorological and cultural marker of the severely dry conditions faced in the state's agricultural areas. From as early as 1915, the drought was framed as both an aberration and opportunity, as a defining experience of character and belonging and as a proxy for predicting the weather. Important to this framing process was the contemporary reportage of local newspapers, which provide insight into how the 1914 drought was perceived and subsequently portrayed. Close listening to oral history interviews with wheatbelt farmers and their families reveals the extent to which these reports aligned with personal experiences of drought and climate variability in the region. The chapter examines the ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous Western Australians experienced and remembered this drought and how these memories shaped personal and state responses to subsequent periods of water scarcity.