ABSTRACT
It started with the ‘Rain of Blood’ over Melbourne in 1896. On Boxing Day people left their homes for the open air of parks and streets and seaside to escape the heat of a still and sultry day. Families laid rugs under the shade of trees or on the sand and picnicked and played cricket or just relaxed in the sea-cooled air by the shore. Late in the afternoon a gusting north-westerly struck the city; showers of rain followed and thousands of people were caught in the storm. Their summer clothing displayed the rain’s ‘peculiar characteristic in a remarkably graphic manner’: light-coloured dresses and shirts were covered in red spots, the asphalt streets turned coffee-brown and the trains on the suburban lines looked as if they had ‘just come out of a mud deluge’.1 Everywhere there were signs of this ‘phenomenon of unusual character’,2 which ‘struck terror into a good many hearts’, according to one newspaper.3 The red rain at Melbourne was reported throughout the colonies and numerous letters to the editor advanced theories for its origins. It was said to have reached as far as Tasmania where it turned cherries on the trees bitter.4
