Rebecca Jones

"Navigating crazy weather in arid Australia. 1900s-1950s"

Rebecca Jones is an environmental historian with particular interest in climate, weather, rural health and adaptation in Australia. She has also worked in contemporary health social science research. Rebecca's most recent book publication is Slow Catastrophes: Living with drought in Australia published by Monash University Publishing.

Abstract:

Nurses working in remote hospitals in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century diagnosed patients with emotional disorders such as debility, neurasthenia and 'nerves' which they associated with the climate.  A hot and arid climate combined with an environment that was sparsely vegetated, thinly populated and dominated by sand, salt and rock was very different from both temperate, populous regions of Australia and the European climates from which settlers originated. This, nurses believed, deeply affected settlers emotionally and physically.
Health professionals, like the broader population, held seemingly contradictory ideas about the relationship between climate and health: heat, aridity and desert environments were thought to threaten Europeans' emotional stability and yet settlers that were exposed to these challenging climates, could adapt and, it was believed become more emotionally robust and vigorous specimens of their race. While ideas of acclimatisation were gaining ascendency over ideas of erosion of vigour during this period, both contradictory theories were evident well into the mid twentieth century.  During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, competing concepts of colonialism, race and nationalism as well as changing social conditions and demographics influenced understandings of the role that climate played in emotional wellbeing.  This, in turn, directly affected the way emotional conditions were diagnosed and treated by nurses in remote Australian hospitals. 

This presentation will draw on nurses' diaries and correspondence as well as patient statistics and medical reports from archives of the Australian Inland Mission, an organisation established in the early twentieth century to improve the physical and social situation of settlers in remote Australia.  This is part of a research project exploring the effects of, and adaptation to, extreme weather in arid regions of Australia in the first half of the twentieth century.