Emily O'Gorman

Growing rice on the Murrumbidgee River: cultures, politics, and practices of food production and water use, 1900 to 2012

Abstract Within the context of contemporary concerns about ecological degradation and debates about water use for irrigation, this article examines how and why commercial rice growing began in the Murrumbidgee River region, New South Wales. It focuses on the crops establishment and rapid expansion from approximately 1900 to 1960 and concentrates on three events, which each significantly shaped commercial rice growing: the problems faced by the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area during its first years of operation, the introduction of Californian varieties of rice, and World War II. This history of rice growing reveals some of the changing connections between regional, state, national, and global concerns about food and water. The analysis builds on Marnie Haig-Muirs 1996 examination of the economic forces that influenced rice growing in Wakool, located in the Murray River valley, during World War II, taking a different geographical perspective, a broader temporal view, and emphasising the importance of considering the cultural dimensions of the establishment of rice growing. It expands previous histories of water management and irrigation in Australia by examining historical agricultural publications related to rice. This history is relevant to contemporary issues around rice farming and the Murray-Darling Basin, and this article explores the ways in which the history of rice has shaped the contemporary political and physical landscape.

The pelican slaughter of 1911: a history of competing values, killing and private property from the Coorong, South Australia

In 1911, approximately 2000 pelicans were slaughtered on a group of islands within the Coorong lagoon in South Australia. The islands were a favoured nesting site, and a group of people had waited until the eggs hatched to kill both adult and young birds in order to collect the maximum payout from a 1 penny bounty that had been put on the head of each pelican by the South Australian Fisheries Department. The killings prompted advocates of bird protection, particularly ornithologists, to seek security for the rookeries against future raids by leasing the islands. A range of other interests became entangled in this decision, as some ornithologists also sought to prevent local Aboriginal people from harvesting bird eggs in the area. Examining these events and their consequences, this article has two related goals. The first goal is to show the role of animals and their environments in co-shaping legal geographies. The second is to examine the contours and histories of competing ideas about protection, killing, and private property that shaped the legal geography of the Coorong.