I have been reading up on the history of a river system in south western Victoria. It drains about 3% of Victoria and the river is about 60 million years old. The area is now considered to be "safe" or reliable farming country, but with climate change it was as dry as the Mallee is today during the period 21,000 to 8000 years ago. The climate then became tropical before settling about 3000 years ago into it's present climate.
Exploration began in the 1830's with Major Mitchell hampered firstly by a drought and then major flooding. The wheel ruts his wagons cut into the mud lasted a 100 years. This may be due to the fact that the 1800's seemed to go from one drought to the next virtually every decade with a 6 year drought in the 1880's leading up to the "big one" in 1902, the federation drought. However people at the time claimed that as bad as it was, it still wasn't as bad as the mid 1800's. The first half of the 1900's were also dominated by dry years and drought, another "big one" in 1914. It is only after WW2 that things seemed to improve despite the drought in 1967, 1982 and the most recent one. This is consistent with Australia generally being wetter in the second half of the 1900's than the first half. So despite all the talk of rapid climate change, it seems, in this area at least, any changes over the last 150 years seem to be still positive, in terms of rainfall at least. But is this due to shifting weather patterns or a shifting climate?
