by Kaye Dee

An illustration of the space station and space shuttle proposal outlined in the Agnew Plan. Will we ever see this become reality?

Breaking the Drought
Australian poet Dorothea Mackellar famously described our nation as a land of “droughts and flooding rains”, and her words have rung particularly true these past few months.

Since 1965, the entire eastern part of Australia has been mostly gripped by drought, which has contributed to devastating bushfires, including the catastrophic 1967 Tasmanian fires in which 62 people died in one day and 1,400 homes were lost. Even as the drought began to ease elsewhere, it continued in large parts of Queensland and inland New South Wales, destroying land, stock and livelihoods in the pastoral and agricultural regions that are the mainstay of our national economy. 

Sheep desperate for feed and water during the height of the drought in 1967 gathering at a nearly-dry waterhole

But at last, the drought has truly broken, with an extremely wet Summer across Queensland that has so far included the second largest number of cyclones (hurricanes) ever recorded in our region. In this past month, the deluge has caused massive inundation across the state turning large swathes of the outback into an inland sea – recently dry rivers now flowing sheets of water thirty miles wide!
But for the first time, in addition to using satellites to track the cyclones (thank you TIROS, NIMBUS and ESSA), the Bureau of Meteorology has also used them to track the course of flooding across the remote parts of Australia, enabling outback communities to be given timely warning that floods are on the way.

Cyclone Sophie, one of the record number to cyclones to develop this season, is seen crossing the coast of Western Australia in this satellite image

Although the flooding is presently devastating towns, farms and stations (ranches) across Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia as the waters flow south, we know that it will open the way for a brighter future in the affected areas, and put new vigour into the Australian economy, as the parched land becomes productive again following its drenching.

Aerial view of the flooded town of Narrabri in outback New South Wales

On the space front, this past month has also provided us with a new crop of space news, with new satellites launched, and NASA looking to its future with a new Administrator and a new road-map to potentially guide its future programmes.

Continue reading [March 28, 1971] The Way Ahead? (NASA's Future Plans and March Mission Round-up) →