Its mineral-rich land was the birthplace 133 years ago of BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest mining company, but today the outback city of Broken Hill withers under a drought that has sapped its fresh water, desiccated its gardens and left children with painful skin allergies.
There were once 80 hotels, testament to a rollicking frontier city so remote that it was outside the law.
Hardly any hotels remain. The silver and zinc ore mines are largely exhausted — and now the water has gone too.
Most of the 20,000 residents 700 miles west of Sydney buy bottled water rather than drink the brackish stuff from their taps — or at least boil it first.
People are finding the drought psychologically punishing. Ramu Nachiappan, a GP in Broken Hill for 25 years, said: “There are families who are telling me they wish to leave, but where do you go? Their real estate’s not worth much, the mining boom’s at an end, these mining towns are doing it hard.”
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It’s not only Broken Hill that is suffering. Years of sparse rains across the Australian food bowl — the 390,000 square mile Murray-Darling basin, an agricultural area bigger than Egypt — have brought once-rich estates to their knees.
Tolarno station, southeast of Broken Hill, is a sheep and cattle property of half a million acres, with a 30-room homestead on the banks of the Darling river, Australia’s third-longest waterway. Set up 165 years ago, it holds a colourful place in outback history: in 1894 rebellious shearers amassed at Tolarno and set ablaze a river paddle steamer carrying shearing strike-breakers and police.
It was Australia’s only act of inland piracy and provided inspiration for the country’s best-known poet, AB “Banjo” Paterson, to write Waltzing Matilda, the de facto national anthem.
Today the 1,000-mile Darling is almost bone dry at Tolarno. A walk through its dusty channel reveals bottles and trinkets, tossed from the paddle steamers that once began the passage of Australian wool to Europe. The water crisis has reduced the property’s sheep to a couple of thousand head.
Rob McBride, 52, its owner, survives by rounding up and selling the wiry wild goats that range across his land. Once they were pests, now there’s a Mexican market for their meat. “I am not a quitter and I am going to die in this country because I love this country too much,” he said. “The thing is, if you take all my water away, what have I got left? There’s no eco-system, there’s no future. Water is everything.”
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About 80 miles north of Tolarno lies a surreal manifestation of the crisis: Sunset Strip, a hamlet of holiday homes. Sun-bleached kayaks, surfboards and barbecues lie about. Many homes have jetties that taper off into a mirage the colour of bones.
Until recently there was a vast natural lakes system here, with weirs and dams added in the 1940s. It held three times more water than Sydney harbour and teemed with birds and fish. Now the lakes, like many of the houses, are empty. National water-management policies led to them being drained in 2013 for farmers in the parched southern states. The rest evaporated.
Farmers and townspeople are caught in an increasingly desperate chess game; how to allocate ever more sparse water. Mr McBride fears that plans to install “super bores” — tapping underground water so that Broken Hill can survive — will drain the last reserves from himself and other big landholders.
In the background is the troubling question of whether Australia’s great inland rivers will recover. Rob Vertessy, the outgoing head of the country’s Bureau of Meteorology, said last week that climate change would intensify droughts and floods. “Australia faces a really perilous water security challenge,” he warned.
On Saturday night vast areas of Queensland had their the hottest April night since records began in the 1800s. By now autumn should have come — but there’s no sign of it.
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Behind the story: From Niño to Niña — a climate in turmoil
A new menace is about to send the world’s climate into turmoil. By the summer, floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornados are expected across the world as the Pacific does a somersault from the recent El Niño to the opposite effect, La Niña (Paul Simons writes).
A heavy monsoon, leading to flooding in India and southeast Asia, and a strong hurricane season in the Atlantic are the most likely effects, according to Adam Scaife at the Met Office. The possible increase in the number and strength of hurricanes would come after a subdued season last year, when high winds from El Niño killed off most tropical storms.
With La Niña, the high winds slacken, allowing hurricanes to grow. Forecasters are putting the chances of a hurricane hitting the US this year at 50 per cent, after 11 years without a major one making landfall. The US should also brace itself for a rise in the number and strength of tornados this summer.
A stronger monsoon season would bring relief to a searing heatwave in India and southeast Asia. Vietnam, a big rice exporter, has been particularly hit by its worst drought in a century.
However, heavy rains could unleash catastrophic floods, as happened in 2011 when Thailand was inundated, including much of Bangkok. Australia could be hit by powerful cyclones and big rainfalls, bringing major flooding, and the same may be true of much of Africa, especially Ethiopia.
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For the UK and northwestern Europe, the effects of La Niña are marginal this summer. Next year, though, La Niña typically results in a mild, wet end to winter and the possibility of floods.
