ABSTRACT
The wheatlands region is generally regarded as an economic zone, dedicated to the production of agricultural and pastoral commodities for world markets. Drought and death are part of life in the semi-arid landscapes of the Australian wheatlands. Australian geographer J. M. Powell, calls them Australia’s ‘landscapes of hopes’ or, more bluntly, ‘our monuments to an economic impertinence, sometimes confirming our fretful estrangement from Nature’. The agricultural and pastoral landscapes represented the public face of the nation, portraying its true character and spirit. Prolonged drought dramatically exposes the ecological and social stresses of farming landscapes and communities at the frontiers of rural life in Australia. One of the most significant challenges to the prevailing economic assessment of the rural landscape is posed by mounting scientific evidence of ecological change in agricultural and pastoral regions. The continuing expansion of cropping into the inland plains since the 1950s represented perhaps the most dramatic episode of landscape change since European occupation.
