AUSTRALIA: Monsoon That Failed

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Nature's vagaries were not so simply faced in Australia. Monsoon, rains sweeping in from the Indian Ocean across the northern hump of Australia have created a rich patch of cattle-raising country about the size of Texas. But in the recent monsoon season (November to March), for the first time in living memory, the rains did not come. Not only the northern pasture land, but the whole top half of Australia began to dry up. Within six months there was hardly a blade of grass in an area the size of Western Europe.

Government drilling teams, sent in to open up new artesian wells, could not cope with a drought of this magnitude. Drovers who tried to take their herds south over the regular stock routes that skirt Australia's vast central desert found plenty of well water, but no grazing. Some fodder was brought in, but the cost was prohibitive. In the northern pasture land the water holes began filling up with rotting carcasses. Cattlemen were killing the calves, burning dead beasts in heaps of 50, while crows and kitehawks slowly circled in the cloudless blue sky. Drought toll to date: more than 100,000 cattle out of 1,000,000.

Last week the aborigines, who have been holding nightly rainmaking ceremonial dances, gave up in despair. Government medicine men also admitted defeat, radioed northern cattlemen that no relief could be expected until next November's monsoon—if it came. One result: there will be no beef available for export to Britain this year.