Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip shows the devastation caused first by the Maitland floods of 1955 and then by a drought that gripped north-eastern New South Wales and parts of Queensland. The clip opens with scenes of the aftermath of the flood focusing on objects – collapsed houses, bogged cars and a twisted railway track. Men work to clear debris, while others salvage possessions from the mud. The only sound, other than haunting background music, is of a tractor. The drought sequence presents images of dead cattle on bare earth and a dry riverbed, accompanied by guitar music.

Educational value points

• This clip reveals the aftermath of floods that devastated Maitland, NSW, between 22 and 28 February 1955 when the Hunter River reached a record 12.3 m, turning the town’s main streets into rivers of fast-moving water. Some 2,180 homes were flooded by up to 5 m of muddy water, and 131 houses were destroyed or made uninhabitable. The flood left behind mud and debris including building wreckage, trees, cars and dead livestock.

• While the floods devastated Maitland, they also affected surrounding farmlands and much of the Hunter region. The ‘great floods of eastern NSW’, as they became known, were caused by torrential rain falling on land already saturated after months of unusually high rainfall. River systems on both sides of the Great Dividing Range were flooded, and rivers such as the Hunter rose with unprecedented speed as they carried the floodwaters toward the coast.

• The clip illustrates the consequences of floods, regarded as among the worst disasters in 20th century Australia. During the 1951 floods: 50 people died; 300 were injured; over 40,000 were evacuated from 40 towns; 5,200 houses and 2,000 other buildings were flooded; 500 vehicles were destroyed; about 100,000 livestock were lost. There was extensive damage to infrastructure such as railways and telephone lines. The cost was estimated at $1.3 billion in 2007 figures.

• There is a scene in the clip of the coffin of an army signaller who was electrocuted during rescue operations, illustrating the dangers present in the aftermath of a flood. A huge rescue operation was mounted with the assistance of the armed forces, including the Royal Australian Navy which supplied helicopters to help evacuate people stranded by the flood. About 15,000 people were evacuated from Maitland alone, many rescued from rooftops by boat or helicopter.

• The clip combines stark imagery with plaintive music to vividly convey the tragic consequences of floods and drought. It cuts between images: a teapot washed up on a roadside and a woman standing forlornly outside her partially destroyed home. In the drought sequence the camera pans past skeletal carcasses of livestock on bare earth, which extends to the horizon. The absence of commentary allows the images to ‘speak for themselves’, adding a poetic quality to the solemnity.

• The clip also portrays the effects on livestock and the landscape of drought, a prolonged, abnormally dry period with not enough water for normal needs. The most economically costly climatic extreme, drought disrupts cropping programs, kills livestock and can cause serious environmental damage, particularly through vegetation loss and soil erosion. Australia is the driest inhabitable continent, with highly variable rainfall and frequent droughts that may last years.

• Newspaper cuttings in the clip report that the drought occurred in the NSW north coast and tablelands and indicate its effect on livestock and farmers. It describes how ’on sections of the North Coast and the tablelands, farmers are carting water and hand-feeding stock’. The north of Australia and NSW experienced drought in the early 1950s, particularly between 1951 and 1954 with a brief respite in 1952.

• The clip is from the documentary The Forerunner (1957), which promoted the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme as the basis of a solution to the extremes of flood and drought graphically depicted in this clip. Despite the Scheme, which diverts water from surrounding rivers to generate electricity and then releases this water to irrigate the Murray–Darling Basin, the drought–flood cycle continues. In 2007 dam levels in the region hit record lows due to prolonged drought.

This clip starts approximately 10 minutes into the documentary.

This black-and-white clip shows the aftermath of the Maitland floods in 1955. It canvasses ravaged houses and attempts by locals to remove debris and dead animals. Men and women fossick in the mud to uncover precious belonging. A coffin is loaded onto a truck, all the while haunting background music plays over the sound of a tractor engine.

A shot of a newspaper headline introduces the second half of the sequence, which focuses on drought. There are images of dead cattle on bare earth and a dry riverbed, accompanied by guitar music.