Drought and the water mystery of 1897

“I have had a long trip through the country, and its condition is deplorable. It's a national calamity, and must be faced and treated as such… stock are more than half dead, and water has in some instances to be carted for domestic purposes seven or eight miles. Train loads of chaff and hay to feed studs and valuable sheep are the order of the day.”

Such was the situation across NSW in May 1897 as described by the Member for Barwon, William Nicholls Willis, who had just returned to Sydney after an extended tour through the drought-stricken districts.

“It is a severe visitation of Providence,” Willis said, appealing to Parliament to help “the people of the interior… in the darkest hour of this wretched drought.”

Little did Willis know when he spoke these words that “Providence” was soon to lay a more kindly hand on the people of the parched interior.

“EXTRAORDINARY WATER SUPPLY: A PHENOMENON OF THE DROUGHT,” reads the headline from the May 25, 1897 edition of the Corowa Free Press.

“Extraordinary occurrences are reported from both Bathurst and Orange in the shape of a sudden flow of water into the creeks and dams, although no rain has fallen on any part of the watershed in either place.

“Water has not only phenomenally made its appearance in places ordinarily well watered, but springs which have been dry for years have broken out. Some reports state that water has been shot several feet into the air and has continued to play for a long time like a miniature fountain.”

The Orange correspondent of The Daily Telegraph goes into much greater local detail about the seemingly miraculous occurrence.

“Mr Joseph M'Cooey, of Forest Reefs, says his dam was dry for weeks, but it now contains a supply of water, while an area of swampy land which has also been dry is now covered with water. At Springside, although the creeks were not dry, they now contain a greater depth of water than for months past.

“All along Summer Hill Creek, from Huntley to Alwood, the landowners state there is an increase in water between here and Lucknow. A dairyman states that creeks in his paddocks commenced to run a few days ago, and he now has sufficient water for present needs. At Canobolas, at the head of the creek which supplies the town reservoir, there is also an increased depth in the streams. At March the principal creek now has plenty of water. Broken Shaft Creek, which runs towards Kangaroobie Station, was noticed by Mr M.F. Dalton, the manager of Kangaroobie, to be dry a few days ago. Three days afterwards he saw the creek running with 3in. of water. Those settlers whose sources of supply were not quite dry say that the depth of water is increasing daily…. There is scarcely a farmer in the neighbourhood who has not experienced a replenishment of his supply.”

Newspapers across the country reported this curious turn of good fortune for the residents of Orange and similar reports began to appear from the Murray District and other areas.

Scientific men were sought out to explain the cause of this mysterious water supply. All regarded the phenomenon as highly unusual and, when pressed, their hypotheses ranged from seismic activity to the lack of vegetation, which would normally draw this water from the ground.

But, as several journals relayed, this actually wasn’t the first time that unusual activity of springs had been noted.

According to the Albury Correspondent of The Age, a Riverina stock owner who had been in the district 40 years said: “that in the great drought of 1865 there was a similar outflow of water in that year. The drought broke up in June, and a month previously the springs burst forth. Thirteen years ago, when another drought was experienced, a lesser outflow took place.”

“Old bushmen have remarked before today that some of the springs in the western ranges flow more freely in dry than in wet seasons,” wrote the reporter for the Sydney Evening News.

“It will surely afford food for the scientists… The puzzling thing about these doubly welcome supplies of water from underground is that they come in a period of the severest drought when the plains are literally parched, when river beds are dry, and when there has been hardly any rain for months past in any part of the continent.”

This may have puzzled the scribe for the Evening News, but it is, in part, also the answer to the mystery.

“I have heard the old stories also. The first time in an outback pub and I thought that it was just a silly superstition. Not so! There is a good explanation,” wrote hydrogeologist, Dr Ian Acworth, in reply to a query from Orange City Life.

Emeritus Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of NSW, Dr Acworth has carried out extensive geological/hydrogeological investigations into aquifers beneath the Liverpool Plains, and in 2019 he published a major textbook on groundwater investigation.

“Basically where the atmospheric pressure changes, the groundwater level will respond. So it's a well-known sort of observational fact if you like,” Dr Acworth explained.

“And you can tell all sorts of things about the groundwater aquifer and all the rest of it from the amplitude of the response.”

Groundwater levels fluctuate on a daily basis in response to atmospheric pressure changes, he said, even to the effects on barometric pressure caused by lunar tides. But in times of severe drought, the drop in atmospheric pressure due to an approaching storm front can make this effect far more pronounced.

“Where you've got the water level drained down after a period of drought, so there's no more seepage into the rivers or creeks or streams… If you then drop the atmospheric pressure by 100 millibars or whatever, the water level will come up by the same amount with the impact basically that springs will start to flow again, seeps will start to seep water, and you'll get water coming into the creeks and the rivers,” Dr Acworth said.

Thirty years ago, Dr Acworth experienced the impact of this first-hand when hurrying to finish drilling a borehole on the Liverpool Plains ahead of a predicted rain front.

“We completed the borehole just as it started raining and everybody was slapping and clapping themselves on the back… we tried to drive out and the rig went axle deep into mud that hadn't been there in the morning,” he recalled.

“What had happened is the seep started to flow as the pressure dropped and destroyed the track that we had driven in on and in fact, the rig was stuck there for six weeks!”

The effect often goes unnoticed, Dr Acworth said, as it is rapidly covered up by the fact that it is followed by rain.

“People say, ‘Oh the river is flowing…’  Yeah, well? Of course, it's bloody raining isn’t mate! But that's the explanation; the pressure drops, the water level comes up,” Dr Acworth said, acknowledging that it’s not an immediately intuitive explanation.

“It appeals to people's sort of mysterious side if you're like, you know, they come up with all sorts of explanations because doesn't appear to be explicable, but in actual fact, it is!”

For those in the grip of the 1897 drought, curious ponderings about this strange phenomenon were soon replaced with joyous celebrations as much-needed rain drenched the parched western districts.

From the June 1 issue of Bathurst's National Advocate:

“THE RAIN: There is no mistake about the matter this time; after a weary number of false promises the rain clouds are at last discharging the much-needed moisture on the thirsty soil. The roofs are resonant with the sound of the falling drops, and the running watercourses singing the death-song of the drought…

“Perhaps the meteorologists alone will quarrel with the downpour. The wise prophet of Brisbane and his less pretentious fellow labourer at Sydney are understood to have been perched on their watch towers for months past looking for the first sign of the disturbance that was to bring rain to the dry West. Several times they gave false alarms and aroused hopes which were doomed to disappointment. Now the rain has come upon us without a word of warning… It can, however, be confidently anticipated that these gentlemen will atone for their lack of prescience by being exceedingly wise after the event.”

For those interested, Dr Ian Acworth has a more detailed explanation of the response of aquifers to atmospheric pressure in his book, Investigating Groundwater.