‘Propagandists for the Soil’: Gender, Erosion and the Murray Valley in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract

This article studies the contributions of a trio of settler Australian women to a wider conversation about soil and water conservation in the Australian Alps in the mid-twentieth century. The women discussed here began their interventions during the war years and continued their efforts into the immediate postwar decade. Their education and labour as well as, to varying degrees, their family’s affluence and esteem, and wartime afforded these women new opportunities to engage directly with the challenges of soil degradation and to share the insights they drew from these firsthand experiences. Focusing on the contributions of Jocelyn Henderson, Maisie Fawcett and Elyne Mitchell, this article argues that soil conservation in 1940s and 1950s southeastern Australia was a profoundly gendered project that only gained legitimacy and authority as its importance became recognised by state governments.

I would like to thank Katie Holmes for her valuable feedback and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. I am also grateful to the editors, Fiona Paisley and Tim Rowse, for expertly steering this article to publication, and to Sue Broomhall for her encouragement.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Flora Eldershaw, ‘The Nature Writers’, Meanjin Papers 11, no. 3 (1952): 226, 228.

2 See Jayne Regan, ‘“Racy of the Soil”: Ian Mudie, Right-Wing Nationalism, and the South Australian Soil Erosion Crisis’, Environment and History 24 (2018): 403–26.

3 Emily O’Gorman, ‘Unnatural River, Unnatural Floods? Regulation and Responsibility on the Murray River in the 1950s’, Australian Humanities Review 48 (2010): 87–107.

4 Stuart Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s (Sydney: NewSouth, 2015), 132–4.

5 Katie Holmes and Kylie Mirmohamadi, ‘All Aboard for Modernity: The Better Farming Train’, Agricultural History 91, no. 2 (2017): 215–38.

6 G.W. Leeper, ‘Soil and Civilization. By Elyne Mitchell … ’, Meanjin Papers 5, no. 3 (1946): 258.

7 Elyne Mitchell, Soil and Civilization (Sydney: Halstead Press, 1946), 139.

8 ‘Siltation and Erosion Problems: Woman’s Warning’, Argus, 17 August 1944, 5; ‘Miss Henderson’s Forestry Scheme’, Border Morning Mail, 17 November 1943, 2.

9 ‘Swifts Creek’, Bairnsdale Advertiser and Omeo Chronicle, 12 October 1945, 1.

10 Libby Robin, ‘Radical Ecology and Conservation Science: An Australian Perspective’, Environment and History 4, no. 2 (1998): 191–208.

11 See K.B. Showers, ‘Soil Erosion and Conservation: An International History and a Cautionary Tale’, in Footprints in the Soil: People and Ideas in Soil History, ed. Benno P. Warkentin (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006), 369–406.

12 G.V. Jacks and R.O. Whyte, The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey of Soil Erosion (London: Faber and Faber, 1939), 18, 76–7.

13 Ibid., 26.

14 S.M. Wadham, Reconstruction and the Primary Industries (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1944), 14.

15 Rural Reconstruction Commission, Land Utilization and Farm Settlement: The Commission’s Third Report (Canberra: Rural Reconstruction Commission, 1944), 46.

16 Rural Reconstruction Commission, Irrigation, Water Conservation and Land Drainage: The Commission’s Eighth Report (Canberra: Rural Reconstruction Commission, 1945), 31. The reservoir in question was likely Laanecoorie Weir on the Loddon River, which in its first forty years of operation lost more than half its capacity due to sedimentation as a consequence of dredging and hydraulic mining. See Susan Lawrence and Peter Davies, Sludge: Disaster on Victoria’s Goldfields (Melbourne: La Trobe University Press, 2019), 19.

17 Janette-Susan Bailey, Dust Bowl: Depression America to World War Two Australia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 203–34; Karen Twigg, ‘“Dust, Dryness and Departure”: Constructions of Masculinity and Femininity during the WWII Drought’, History Australia 18, no. 4 (2021): 694–713; Karen Twigg, ‘The Green Years: The Role of Abundant Water in Shaping Postwar Constructions of Rural Femininity’, Environment and History 27, no. 2 (2021): 277–301.

18 Twigg, ‘“Dust, Dryness and Departure”’, 694–713; Katie Holmes, ‘The “Mallee-Made Man”: Making Masculinity in the Mallee Lands of South Eastern Australia, 1890–1940’, Environment and History 27, no. 2 (2021): 251–75.

19 Regan, 403–26.

20 Libby Robin, ‘The Professor and the Journalist: Science in Popular Conservation Campaigns’, Victorian Historical Journal 65, no. 2 (1994): 154–68; Robin, ‘Radical Ecology and Conservation Science’, 191–208; Chris Soeterboek, ‘“Folk-Ecology” in the Australian Alps: Forest Cattlemen and the Royal Commissions of 1939 and 1946’, Environment and History 14 (2008): 241–63; Deirdre Slattery, ‘Science and Land Use: The Kosciusko Primitive Area Dispute of 1958–65’, Environment and History 16, no. 4 (2010): 409–30.

21 E.M. Webb, ‘Keep Hume Clear of Silt’, Herald, 15 July 1936, 12.

22 Lawrence and Davies, 8.

23 Ian D. Rutherford, Christine Kenyon, Martin Thoms, James Grove, Jodie Turnbull, Peter Davies and Susan Lawrence, ‘Human Impacts on Suspended Sediment and Turbidity in the River Murray, South Eastern Australia: Multiple Lines of Evidence’, River Research and Application 36 (2020): 522–41.

24 ‘Vain Fight to Check Relentless March of Fires’, Herald, 14 January 1939, 3.

25 ‘Corryong Threatened’, Daily Advertiser, 14 January 1939, 4.

26 B.J. Costar, ‘Thomas Walter (Tom) Mitchell (1906–1984)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University (2012), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mitchell-thomas-walter-tom-14976/text26165 (accessed 25 May 2024); Maggie MacKellar, Core of My Heart, My Country: Women’s Sense of Place and the Land in Australia and Canada (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004), 239.

27 Linden Gillbank, ‘Into the Land of the Cattlemen’, in On the Edge of Discovery: Australian Women in Science, ed. Farley Kelly (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1993), 141–2.

28 Gillbank, ‘Into the Land’, 143.

29 Kate Darian-Smith, ‘War and Australian Society’, in Australia’s War, 1939–45, ed. Joan Beaumont ([1996] New York: Routledge, 2020), 54–81.

30 John S. Turner, cited in Linden Gillbank, From System Garden to Scientific Research: The University of Melbourne’s School of Botany under Its First Two Professors (1906–1973) (Melbourne: School of Botany, University of Melbourne, 2010), 15; John S. Turner, cited in Gillbank, ‘Into the Land’, 140.

31 Linden Gillbank, The Biological Heritage of Victoria’s Alps: An Historical Exploration (Melbourne: Heritage Commission, 1991), 27.

32 Ibid., 28.

33 Fawcett, cited in D.J. Carr, A Book for Maisie: Celebrating the Life and Work of S.G.M. Carr nee Fawcett, Pioneer Australian Alpine Ecologist, 1912–88 (Canberra: D.J. Carr, 2005), 33.

34 Carr, 32.

35 Sabine Sauter, ‘Lessons from the US: Australia’s Response to Wind Erosion (1935–1945)’, Global Environment 8 (2015): 293–319. In 1938 Clayton would become the first Director of the New South Wales Soil Conservation Service, while in 1957 Forster would succeed Wadham as Professor of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne.

36 Fawcett, cited in Carr, 37.

37 Margaret Beveridge, ‘Woman Scientist Studies Soil Erosion’, Weekly Times, 21 April 1943, 18.

38 M.W., ‘“Miss Washaway” Has Spent Three Years in Outback Victoria’, Argus, 15 April 1944, 3.

39 Gillbank, ‘Into the Land’, 141.

40 Jane Carey, Taking to the Field: A History of Australian Women in Science (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2023), 104, 168.

41 Kate Darian-Smith, On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 130–1.

42 Gillbank, ‘Into the Land’, 141–2.

43 M.W., ‘“Miss Washaway”’, 3.

44 Ibid.

45 ‘Woman Runs Big Fat Stock Station’, Pix 13, no. 6 (1944), 8–9.

46 Kay Saunders, ‘Not for Them Battle Fatigues: The Australian Women’s Land Army in the Second World War’, Journal of Australian Studies 21 (1997): 81–7.

47 For interwar expressions of rural masculinity, see Kate Murphy, ‘The “Most Dependable Element of Any Country’s Manhood”: Masculinity and Rurality in the Great War and Its Aftermath’, History Australia 5, no. 3 (2008): 72.1–72.20.

48 M.W., ‘“Miss Washaway”’, 3.

49 Soil Conservation Board, Sixth Annual Report for Year Ended 30th June 1946 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1946), 4.

50 Fawcett is named only in the 1943 and 1944 annual reports, where she is acknowledged as preparing the ecological survey of the Hume Catchment. See Soil Conservation Board, Third Annual Report for Year Ended 30th June 1943 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1943), 5; Soil Conservation Board, Fourth Annual Report for Year Ended 30th June 1944 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1944), 4, 9.

51 Soil Conservation Board, Seventh Annual Report for Year Ended 30th June 1947 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1947), 7.

52 D.G. Parbery, ‘Ethel Irene McLennan 1891–1983: Pioneer Teacher of Mycology and Plant Pathology in Victoria’, Australasian Plant Pathology 18, no. 3 (1989): 47–56; Carey, 114–16.

53 Gillbank, The Biological Heritage, 29–30; Sally Morrison, Interview with Professor Nancy Millis, microbiologist, Australian Academy of Science (2001), https://www.science.org.au/learning/general-audience/history/interviews-australian-scientists/professor-nancy-millis. (accessed 25 May 2024).

54 Darian-Smith, On the Home Front, 84–5. On the survey’s documentation of the gendered nature of wartime suburban food production, see Andrea Gaynor, ‘Animal Husbandry and House Wifery? Gender and Suburban Household Food Production in Perth and Melbourne, 1890–1950’, Australian Historical Studies 36 (2004): 238–54.

55 Ann Moyal, ‘Invisible Participants: Women in Science in Australia, 1830–1950’, Prometheus 11, no. 2 (1993): 175–87.

56 Kate Darian-Smith, ‘War and Australian Society’, in Beaumont, 54–81.

57 C.L., ‘A Kingdom of Horses, Cattle and Sheep’, Age, 22 September 1945, 9.

58 ‘Woman Runs’, 8–9; Marine Haig-Muir and Roy Hay, ‘The Economy at War’, in Beaumont, 120–43.

59 ‘A Friend of the Trees’, Argus, 6 January 1945, 11; ‘Trees for Beauty and Utility’, Land, 5 January 1945, 10.

60 Elizabeth Street, ‘Her Interest Is the Murray and Our Forests’, Argus, 22 August 1944, 7.

61 Darian-Smith, ‘War and Australian Society’, 54–81.

62 Leonard E.B. Stretton, Report of the Royal Commission to Inquire into Forest Grazing together with Minutes of Evidence, (Melbourne: Government of Victoria, 1946).

63 Libby Robin, Defending the Little Desert (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 1998); Jocelyn Henderson, Fire – or Water? (Sydney: Star Printery, 1947); Jocelyn Henderson, draft Fire – or Water?, 41, MS753, National Library of Australia.

64 Mitchell, Soil and Civilization, 66.

65 ‘Trees, Soil, Water’, Murray Valley Newsletter, 15 October 1946, 6.

66 Ruth Lawrence, ‘Environmental Changes on the Bogong High Plains, 1850s to 1990s’, in Australian Environmental History: Essays and Cases, ed. Stephen Dovers (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 167–97.

67 W.K. Hancock, Discovering Monaro: A Study of Man’s Impact on His Environment (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 144–5. See Baldur U. Byles, Report on a Reconnaissance of the Mountainous Part of the River Murray Catchment of New South Wales (Canberra: Government Printer, 1932).

68 ‘Forests to Meet National Need’, Border Morning Mail, 17 June 1943, 5.

69 ‘Community Forests’, Land, 19 November 1943, 3.

70 ‘A Friend of Trees’, Argus, 6 January 1945, 11; Melanie Oppenheimer, ‘“Working for the Duration?” Aspects of Voluntary Work in Queensland during World War Two’, Queensland Review 3, no. 1 (1996): 73–82.

71 ‘Upper Murray Regional Development Committee’, Corowa Free Press, 3 August 1945, 4.

72 ‘Views Conflict’, Border Morning Mail, 1 August 1945, 6; ‘Upper Murray Regional Development Committee’, Corowa Free Press, 3 August 1945, 4.

73 ‘A Woman of Action’, Bulletin, 3 October 1945, 2.

74 ‘Australia from Horseback’, Bulletin, 7 April 1948, 2.

75 MacKellar, 251.

76 C.S., ‘Fire – or Water?’, Bulletin, 1 September 1948, 24; ‘Society’, Bulletin, 1 September 1948, 13.

77 Rosa Lynd, ‘These People’, Western Mail, 7 October 1948, 37.

78 C.S., ‘Who’ll Plant a Tree?’, Bulletin, 10 August 1949, 24.

79 Editor, ‘Will the Earth Always Feed Its People?’, Northern Champion, 25 May 1951, 5.

80 Lynd.

81 ‘Around the Town’, Sun, 1 October 1944, 8.

82 F.S.B., ‘Earth and Home’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 September 1945, 7.

83 ‘Personal Items’, Bulletin, 3 March 1948, 11; ‘Siltation and Erosion Problems: Woman’s Warning’, Jerilderie Herald and Urana Advertiser, 24 August 1944, 3.

84 ‘Forests Our Permanent Assets’, Farmer and Settler, 17 November 1944, 12.

85 Gwen Peck, ‘She Lectures on Reafforestation’, Weekly Times, 21 June 1950, 44.

86 ‘Country Girl’s Community Forests Plan’, Sun, 10 January 1950, 14.

87 C.S., ‘Fire – or Water?’, 24.

88 Katie Holmes, ‘Past, Present, Future: The Future of Feminist History’, Lilith 15 (2006): np.

89 M.W., ‘“Miss Washaway”’, 3.

90 Ibid.

91 Lilian White to Fawcett, February 1946, in Carr, 78.

92 Tom Griffiths, Forests of Ash: An Environmental History (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 137.

93 Fawcett, letter to Lilian White, 1 June 1946, cited in Carr, 89.

94 Evidence presented by the Institute of Foresters of Australia, Royal Commission on Forest Grazing, courtesy Victorian Government Library Service.

95 ‘Grazing on High Plains’, Age, 10 July 1946, 5.

96 Soeterboek, 241–63.

97 Fawcett to John Gertsakis, 1988, cited in Carr, 74.

98 Fawcett to Lilian White, January–June 1946, in Carr, 76.

99 Moyal, 175–87.

100 ‘Community Forests’, Bulletin, 6 September 1944, 7; ‘Community Work in Forestry’, ABC Weekly, 7 July 1945, 40; ‘Personal Items’, Bulletin, 3 March 1948, 11; ‘Women’s Letters’, Bulletin, 6 December 1944, 25.

101 ‘Peace Threat’, Murray Valley Newsletter, 15 January 1950, 23.

102 Twigg, ‘The Green Years’, 277–301; Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Up the Country: Histories and Communities’, Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 118 (2002): 90–9.

103 Libby Robin and Tom Griffiths, ‘Environmental History in Australasia’, Environment and History 10 (2004): 439–74.

104 Stuart Macintyre, ‘The Same under Different Skies: The University in the United States and Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies 33, no. 3 (2009): 353–69.

105 Fawcett to White, in Carr, 104.

106 Fawcett in Carr, 109.

107 Fawcett to White, in Carr, 127; Gillbank, ‘Into the Land’, 152.

108 J.S. Turner et al., A Report on the High Mountain Catchments of New South Wales and Victoria (Canberra: Australian Academy of Science, 1957), 9.

109 Ibid., 29.

110 Costin was awarded his doctorate from the University of Sydney in 1964 for the thesis, ‘Ecological Studies in High Mountain Catchments of South-Eastern Australia’.

111 Carr, 135; Gillbank, ‘Into the Land’, 152. See: S.G.M. Carr and J.S. Turner, ‘The Ecology of the Bogong High Plains I: The Environmental Factors and the Grassland Communities’, Australian Journal of Botany 7, no. 1 (1959): 12–33; S.G.M. Carr and J.S. Turner, ‘The Ecology of the Bogong High Plains II: Fencing Experiments in Grassland C’, Australian Journal of Botany 7, no. 1 (1959): 34–63.

112 Andrea Gaynor, ‘State, Scientists and Citizens: Conserving Lake Magenta and Dragon Rocks, Western Australia’, Historical Records of Australian Science 25, no. 2 (2014): 202–16.

113 Denis Carr to N.S. Noble, 6 September 1958, Consolidated Records of the School of Botany and John Stewart Turner, 1984.0016, Box 97, University of Melbourne Archives.

114 ‘Men of the Land’, Bulletin, 1 September 1954, 32.

115 Jan McDonald, ‘Henderson, Jocelyn (1905–1972)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/henderson-jocelyn-10481 (accessed 24 May 2024).

116 ‘Novelist’s Tribute to Bush Pioneers’, Canberra Times, 19 December 1959, 13.

117 Jocelyn Squire Papers (1942–65), MLMSS 1675, State Library of New South Wales.

118 Elyne Mitchell, Towong Hill: Fifty Years on an Upper Murray Cattle Station (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1989), 48, 95.

119 Mitchell, Towong Hill, 71; MacKellar, 258–9.

120 ‘Mother of Four is Brumby Expert’, Australian Women’s Weekly, 4 June 1958, 31; ‘The Silver Brumby’, Walkabout 25, no. 5 (1959): 38.

121 John Redrup, ‘Soil Balance or Collapse’, Riverlander, September 1952, 6–8.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was funded by an Australian Research Council Department of Education and Training grant SR200200322.