You can’t live without hope that things will change for the better
You can’t live without the dream of someone reading your letter
– Colin Hay, Next Year People
‘It’s a dust bowl.’
These are the parting words from our host in Adelaide when we mention we are heading to Mildura that day.
I only take cursory notice; we’ve been in ‘dust bowls’ before. It’s our term for dry, arid campsites or barren caravan parks, dotted with shimmering vans or flapping, exhausted tents blistering in the sun. Occasional puffs of dust, fluffy drifting clouds, saunter across the space as new arrivals creep in. The dirt sticks to your feet, crusty on the dried edges of your sole.
We start the car and climb in, expecting some heat and crackle, and depart.
It’s a pleasant drive, initially through beautiful tree-filled hills that crown Adelaide, but there’s an edge with the pressing heat and I find myself doing that head shaking, clicking sound thing and commenting on the risk of fire. We turn west. A few hours in, I notice a distant orange smudge on the horizon.
We’ve had dust storms before and spit out the dirt
We’ve had droughts before but none quite like this
– Colin Hay, Next Year People
It takes a while before I realise the smudge is dust. A huge sheet of hanging powder rises from the line of the horizon. It doesn’t look like those wild, violent, cumulus dust storms that roll across a town, gently swallowing what stands in front. It’s haze, and although still distant, menacing and thick.
Outside the land stretches far as it flashes past us. Some of it looks like unimproved scrub with low-lying, resilient plants stubbornly surviving without it seems, any water whatsoever. Other sections are endless paddocks that have been cultivated at some stage. But everything is like ground bone and powder dry.
As we travel, the wind increases for no discernable reason and there are small drifts of dust dancing across the road. The atmosphere has changed from clear to a badly done fake tan, copper and orange. Another car has stopped and I see the shirt of the male driver who has stepped out of the car being violently ruffled and folded by the wind.
It gets stronger, and all around us, dust is now being raised and tossed. It’s not frightening or violent, but almost sadly systematic. The bent and muddled fencing that once ran straight for miles is now just the barrier that holds great drifts of soft dirt piled neatly on either side, like never ending sand dunes. At times, the fence gives in and disappears beneath the soil. In the middle of this apocalyptic scene, I think, ‘what’s going on here’ and ‘isn’t this a disaster?’
We arrive in Mildura, leaving the dust behind, but it only takes a glance in the rear view mirror and the great cloud remains. It stays all afternoon. By morning, looking to the west, it initially appears clear but the winds develop and by lunch, the rusty shadow reappears.
Dry endless plains and we suffered the worst
Are we being punished or are we just cursed
– Colin Hay, Next Year People
I do what the privileged confused do and Google, and discover Mildura has lived with dust for decades. There have been some astonishing days (with accompanying photos) where the town has been subsumed in the topsoils of the country that surrounds it. I also recall my dad telling me of days when he was a child growing up in western New South Wales and his mum, my grandmother, closing every window, louvre and door as a huge shadow approached. Dust has been raised before and will continue to be.
The Dust Bowl in America, fascinating in its environmental portent and social impact, is close to a century past, but the devastating images of Dorothea Lange and others still burn deep. The edge of Mildura is not depression America, and people are not leaving following dreams of fortune dropped from the sky (so powerfully described by Steinbeck), but it’s still shocking to witness such powerful natural decay. But after the shock, another feeling pervades. It’s a heartbreak borne from an overall sense of defeat.
Next year everything will come good
The rains they will fall and we’ll dance on the hood
We’ll fill up our bellies with plentiful food
We’ll eat drink and be merry
Yeah next year people wait and see
We’re next year people you and me
Yeah next year people wait and see
We’re next year people you and me
– Colin Hay, Next Year People
Big Country 