another excellent production. I have spent a lot of time in the Australian outback over the past 60 years and notice that in the past ten years many people have come to realise that so called "drought" is the normal weather pattern for 7 out of every ten years in Australia. Periods of rainfall are the "abnormal". this is stimulating a great deal of change to agricultural practices here in Australia. and by the way, congratulations on your pronunciation of Australian place names, not many non-Australian do it as well as you did.

The one thing missed here is that during the height of the drought Australia was the largest net exporter of embodied water in the world. That is to say as a measure of the water consumed by the products we exported, we had the largest net export of any nation. Household water consumption ampunted to some 1-5% of total water comsumption, all those short showers did nothing, it was mostly water intensive export farming.

Essentially correct with another caveat; Australia's ancient soils are poor in nitrogen and phosphorus and sometimes acidic (strangely). Coupled with regular droughts makes inland farming in Australia a real food production challenge, even for experienced farmers. It's a dry continent with ancient depleted soils (only exceeded in dryness worldwide by Antarctica) with about 10 already named dryland deserts from West to East, South to North covering two thirds of the landmass which have only 3% of Australia's population within them. The deserts are not agriculturally useless; only marginal carrying capacity for dryland cattle and sheep ranching (which is contraversial because hard hoof animals like cattle and sheep damage the duricust and cause erosion).

Another part of the dry conditions in 2009 were the dust storms. The September 2009 dust storm was extraordinary. I'd never seen anything like it and I've never seen anything like it since. Also on the topic of water security, there is quite a lot of water recycling across Australia now. I live in an area of Sydney which has recycled water, however as there was so much opposition to feeding this into the water supply we instead have two water supply lines into each house. Regular potable water, plus a purple recycled water line (which is marked not for drinking). The recycled water line supplies toilets and gardens and has never been subject to water restrictions in the many years I've lived here.

I was born on a farm in Victoria in 98. It’s crazy to think that drought conditions were all I knew until I was 12 years old. It is cool to see something that shaped my childhood covered by one of my favourite channels

This channel is a goldmine. I look forward to having dinner while watching your videos for as long as possible.

This drought was the defining background noise of much of my childhood. I remember local councils distributing hourglasses so you could time your showers, water-saving tips being shown on television, school prayers every morning and afternoon begging God for rain (I went to Catholic school). I was seventeen when the Black Saturday bushfires happened. I remember a summer of coughing up black phlegm every few hours from the smoke, and the city constantly smelling like ash. Rain has never felt sad to me since; after years of summers where dust filled the sky and nearly a decade of constant anxiety about how much water is left in our catchments, rain feels clean and joyful and wholesome. I love the rain now.

Seems pretty dire remembering back to it, I was in primary school about 9 years old and remember in class going through “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down” (ie the toilet was only worth flushing if you did a 💩) plus we were all sent two minute sand timers to indicate how long a shower we should have, and you would stand in a bucket in the shower and throw the water onto the garden after

I remember all the water saving adverts. People really got into it, Australians tend to become a “hive mind” when there’s a problem and will do what’s needed. Perth now has two desalination plants, and it’s building a third.

I remember the big dry as a kid, it was all I knew cause I was born right at the start. We all had to time our showers, not flush the toilet unless we took a shit, couldn't have pools or water the garden in summer. So many of my family and friends families had their entire backyards turn yellow as if the grass were dead from the heat, barely sustained by what little rain did come. I remember seeing pictures of pools as a kid and asking why we weren't allowed to have them. The pool didn't cost that much to get and was still available for purchase as far as I knew, but the cost of the water was so high that it wasn't feasible. On the plus side, that's how I found my love of summer water guns.

a suggestion for a video topic: rise and fall of italian petrochemical around Venice

It's hard to overstate how much the big dry changed the country, at least the parts I know, which is Victoria. In the late 90s I would travel between Melbourne and my home town of Ballarat and pass over a large reservoir, maybe every three months or so and over the years watched with growing alarm as it emptied out and old structures started rising from the water. In 2000 I moved to Asia for work and would go back once a year, so the changes were noticeable. Other than the obvious harsh conditions what was most remarkable was that a lot of the wildlife moved into the cities and towns -- where the water is. When I was growing up it was all sparrows and starlings but now you can see native parrots in the middle of Melbourne. The ibis, bereft of water, moved closer to humans and has become known as the bin-chicken.

I suffered working through the whole thing working my arse off to buy my home in helidon. The drought broke with an unimaginable inland tsunami taking my home. I still haven't recovered and i truly doubt i will considering the current economic and government situation.

Thank you jonh. I can now stop worrying.

As much as it was tough, this drought really changed how a lot of us think of our usage of water. In SA the restrictions were self policing, with neighbours holding each other accountable. Gardening practices also improved, including better and more adaptive plant selection and garden design, the use of mulching to retain moisture and suppress weeds, and drip irrigation systems set on timers for appropriate times of the day to reduce evaporation. Even when the drought ended, I think a lot of people continued to follow these practices.

I misread the title and was about to object to the premise that Australia has a 'millennial drought'. 😅

In 2002 my family moved to a small sub-tropical town on the east coast of Queensland. It must have been a very dry period when we arrived because I remember thinking we had moved to a desert (due in part to the weird amount of cacti we had, probably the only plants that were able to survive at the time). I can't imagine how bad it got further inland.

I have some early memories of the latter end of the drought. I grew up with harsh water resrictions, we'd keep buckets under our showers (mandated to 2 mins) to water the garden. Newspapers would print and report on the levels of our reseviours, and this was in Melbourne, our 2nd largest city. Hope to never go through it again.

I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror - The wide brown land for me! -Dorothea Mackellar We have had this on and on for ages.

I lived through this and even I did not realise Brisbane had recycled water and most of the other desal plants (the Sydney one was a political dust up). At the ATO, drought provisions, especially for farmers, was a constant thing, the intensity waxed and waned over the years

I vividly remember Black Saturday and the subsequent wettest year on record. Was a wild time heading back into Melbourne from a stint living in North East Victoria for 15 months, fantastic video! Absolutely love popping in and watching all the videos you have to upload.

As an Australian who usually watches this channel for the microprocessor videos, this is amazing content that I didn't know I needed to see.

I love watching an Asianometry video where thousands/millions DON'T die when a country has some kind of issue with food/water.

Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

Love how you replaced the deer at the start with a kangaroo :)

I’m from Sea Lake originally, a small town in Northwest Victoria in the middle of the wheat belt. My family still lives there so I witnessed the effects of the drought first hand, and experienced 50°C days there firsthand during the drought. The drought essentially killed the majority of the town, its biggest draw used to be a small lake that pulled in a small tourist traffic, it dried in the 90s and only was repaired and refilled in the mid 2010s. Losing this led to the majority of the population moving away, alongside the shuttering of major services like banks. The town is still a fraction of the size it used to be, and only a couple years ago land prices were so low that buying a car secondhand was more expensive. Fortunately after the pickup of the rains the tourist lake refilled, and the nearby salt flats were discovered as a natural beauty spot and became a tourist destination. The town is slowly recovering but will never be the way it was prior to the droughts.

This channel has been my brain food for the past years. Needless to say I enjoyed every single episode, slightly more for topics that's not too technical. And i can see the shift in your content from technical to strategic. While I'd appreciate a video a day (mainly because i drive to work everyday), but i do hope that you can take a break or slow down and not burn out. Keep up the great work, will be nice to meet up when I'm in tw

Other government responses included installing kilometers of piping for irrigation water, and the subsequent decommissioning of networks of irrigation canals

In the cities, people who had tank water to water their gardens had to put up signs “This Garden Watered by Tank”, or else people would yell at them for watering their garden or having a green lawn. By the end of the drought many homeowners had pulled out their lawns and replaced them with tiles, rock gardens, or low water use succulents etc. The small country towns had it BAD. People couldn’t shower at home. Everyone got a once a week shower at a local sports facility with water trucked in for purpose. A few years after the drought broke, many of the low water gardens in the city were reverted back to lawns and shrubberies when houses sold. But a lot of the largest building projects still have clever water saving and water cleaning and reuse systems integrated into the whole building and grounds.

Desalination plants are a great insurance policy. Expensive but the must be available prior to their need.

Wow this is sucha random subject to find here. I remember this period well, the most alarming part was the amount of hyhdrophobic dusty dirt. The dirt in many location is naturally poor only a 20cm of water holding nutrient holding soil. But it got realy thin and dead around 1999-2001. The past few years has been weirdly wet it seems strange to me. if you spend some effort applying compost it's quiet easy to built a thick top soil layer now.

Awesome job, id love to see you cover what happened after all this. The level of corruption that went into what was essentially banking stolen water and selling it back to the state and federal governments is insane. The Murray Darling is under extreme stress now because of it and many towns that were along the river further down stream have essentially been abandoned because of the cotton farming industry.

Here in Southern California, which is defined as a desert, they are changing their ways. Extremes of weather are the new norm. Dry or wet extremes are the forecast. Efforts to retain the big soaks are now a thing. Example, they are diverting some water off the aqueducts into the desert to percolated into the water table. More dams, a desal. plant in San Diego, largest in the nation, and more. A lot more people in this area than Aussieland in whole. It needs to be figured out big time.

My family grew up in the Victorian dairy industry until 1996, we were lucky to leave the industry before the drought took hold. Having four sons it was expected that we would remain in the industry, that wasn't going to happen, I was involved in dairy politics for some years and knew that the future was going to be perilous at best. I'm happy to be out of farming, but feeling less of a person for doing so, there is a feeling of belonging when you work the land and are responsible for the animals you breed . I really feel for those who have had to endure the droughts and floods, unimaginable heartache for so many. Neither farms we have owned are going concerns now, the price of water makes it nonviable to irrigate pasture for milk production.

Great video. and well done pronouncing Mel-ben. You didn't mention the effect of the Indian Ocean Dipol (IOD). It can have a significant influence on the north west of the country, and upper level troughs can pull the tropical moisture down through the centre to victoria and southern New South Wales. In 2011 we not only had a strong La Nina, but a negative IOD bringing more tropical moisture into Australia's south east, which contributed to the devastating floods.

I love your videos. It's great to see one about my home country, be it on a difficult issue.

An Australian here. When this video started, with the words '"the millenium drought.... fundamentally changed Australian society'' I thought I was watching an old soviet TV news programme - remember Soviet TV broadcast internationally via satellite in the 1970's? Nice music but their news used to gleefully report things like '"Australian workers are striking again, as they have had enough of the harsh conditions'' and show footage of some protest somewhere that involved a single firm in a single industry, amounting something 0.1% of Australia's workers at most. But without actually telling lies, they would make it sound like the whole country riven with industrial strife. The millenium drought certainly had NO effect on me, and no noticeable effect on our society generally. Farmers were certainly affected, but very few Australians are farmers. it should be noted that poor farming practices contributed to unnecessary dependence on high rainfall. most wheat farmers have recently adopted a different ploughing regime which better retains soil moisture. However, this video went on to be generally good. Asianometry did miss something important - our State governments needed to address water shortage in recent years not because of climate change, and not because of a drought - marked lack of rain periodically has long been understood as a normal part of Australia's climate - but because of considerable population growth. Since the early 1960's the population has exponentially grown from 9 million to 27 million. States ran out of convenient rivers to dam up, and had to turn to desalinating sea water. That's a 3 times increase and naturally the government has had to provide roughly three times as much water. we all drink about the same amount, flush the toilet about the same number of times, water gardens and lawn, etc. Governments don't like to spend money or accept blame, and like governments worldwide, our State governments have blamed the climate - anything other than themselves - when in fact they should have planned for the population growth and built desalination plants and other measures sooner.

I live in Australia, I’m 73 yo and have seen government after government play politics with water. It’s big business, and I can assure you there were much better options than the BS desalination plants we were made to buy. Thing is those with the money listen to those that want it and turn deaf ears to those who know better. Now we are caught up in the BS drive to zero emissions, again the politicians, those with the money want more!! From us. It’s got bloody nothing to do with fossil fuel use but if we believe that the taxes can be raised. Climate change may be happening, it has for millennia, but it has nothing to do with fossil fuel use. A far more URGENT issue is deforestation, but wait we can’t tax that cos that would mean our ‘mates’ would have to pay…the developers

The Australian Asianometry logo looks so good 😁

There has to be a way to build cheap water infrastructure, such as dams, artificial aquifers and so on. The age-old way of winning against floods is canals, not dams. This could create protection against both excessive rain and drought, and without the energy cost that recycling or desalination has.

What is is with Australia being perpetually cursed? Like, "hey, we recovered from that drought!" "Great! but like 10% of the country is on fire, and people are reporting literal waves of mice eating everything they can, and we keep taxing everything fun to do"

You should explain that the US system works in Australia: If you leave the land your loan is secured with, you no longer have to pay off the loan: That's a motivation to give up the farming job. In other countries, the bank pays part of the loan by selling the soil, but you still have to pay the rest yourself. A big problem, because then you have nothing left to work with.

Friendly Jordies did a great piece on the cotton industries misuse of water.

Great Work as always

The declination plant in Melbourne was also never activated and still sits dormant to this day.

This one hits me personally as I was doing from primary school to high school and then to an adults in my early/mid 20s while being in central Victoria during the millennium drought and it's eventual and disastrous ending with the floods. Living on a small far right next to a drinking water supply reservoir , I saw everything from lush wet seasons in my early childhood with fond memories with weekly strong thunder storms during summer, and often some snow in winter. Then, as the video nailed it on the head, in 1997 things started to changed and I noticed my favorite summer thunderstorms became a thing of the part. By 2002, in high school I was driving quad bikes on the "desert planes" which I called the bone dry and weed infested 10s of square Km of reservoir lake bottom and once even drove my paddock bomb on there. Spend my holidays exploring this empty lake. I also remember the land being infested with gauze and thistles, pattisons curse and all kinds of hard to kill noxious weeds, something that I virtually didn't see as a child. Black Saturday was also close to home in a lot of ways, where I was also had bush fires the same day and I recall the day being dark and it raining ash all day. Once 2010 hit, we got something like 400mm of rain in 2.5 days and one of the days was close to 200mm. The house and gutters were completely overwhelmed, filling the cavity in between floors of the 2 story farm house until the entire ceiling plaster of the living room collapsed and fell to the floor and 100s of L of water in the living room floor. There was much difficultly in insurance as much of the state of Vic was underwater and many of the insurance companies went broke. Luckily we eventually pushed them enough to get repairs done. Also, not anything to do with the millennium drought, but I also was in Melbourne driving home over the Bolte when the thunderstorm asthma even happened. I had asthma as a kid and oddly I was completely unaffected by the intense yellow haze. One of my work colleagues however got quite sick from it. Many many people died that night and over the next several days. Australia's climate is unforgiving but it is a way of life here.

At first I thought this was a drought that lasted from the end of the 19th century into the first decade of the 21st century and I was thinking. "How come I've never heard of this? I guess Australia is still extremely dry and just slightly less extremely dry now.

Awesome video mate.. 👍

How well researched! I as a old geezer recognized them all, yes even the before my time ones as I love history. And best of all, you didn't scream "Climate change" . Our government screams that every time we have wind,rain,drought,fire,snow...whatever

I remember when it broke in 2007/2008 haha. My dad came home to find 10 year old me filling all the waste bins with 100s of Litres of water from the gutter drainage. He joined me in his work clothes and we were just soaked 😂 Ps soon after it was mandatory to have a rainwater tank in every new home.

Sadly the largest cause of Australian droughts is unsustainable farming practices. If you look at the historical record Australia has changed much since described by early explorers. The National gallery shows a green country in paintings prior to 1860. Sheep turn the land into bare dirt, on staggeringly large areas. When it rains they crop this bare dirt and have the largest Wheat harvest in history post drought. Wind erosion since white settlement is staggering and 2 or 3% of New Zealand soils are Australia fallout. Indeed in the 1890s peoples laundry got dirty on the line in NZ because so much of Australia was falling on them. Some farmers are responsible and destock some gamble and there is no law preventing this. Historically no one destocked and 30 or 40 000 head dying on your property was normal, with the belief when it rained you would make so much money it did not matter.

Snowy River Project to divert water inland. You forgot about the recent Brisbane River floods including 2011 and 2017. And Warragamba dam overflowed in early 2021 during the big wet.

Australia is one giant desert, it's surprising they can grow anything there at all.

One problem with is Australia city culture is it doesn’t believe in grey water plumbing or devices like wash shower or wash basin to toilet etc Along with instant bathroom copper pipes to save water & to instant heat the water

Super interesting. thank you.

Random Margo Robbie lore dropped like a nuke! Cheers, mate!

We're in a drought now, it's barely rained for months in southern nsw

We are at the point where desalination plants will be a must for all countries with access to the sea

It is a good summary, thanks.

I remember being in Brisbane around ~’05 and having to take 5 minute showers. Fun times.

I learnt a lot about my own country. Thank you

Or you could be the brisbane government in 2010 who left water restrictions at level 3, when the dams were at 108%, then we had extereme rainfall to the point of flooding, and they had to let the dams out so they didnt break, adding to the floods of brisbane

My hose turned into a solid black mass from heat and lack of use.

I was born into and grew up through this drought. I don't really have any memories of rain until 2009-10, when it suddenly felt like the entire country was drowning all at once. I'm still not sure I'm used to how much rain we get these days.

I recall Linux Conf Australia 2011 in Brisbane - the show went on with a hasty last minute change of venue after the floods. Was quite surreal walking along the riverwalk in the city seeing the high water mark well over head level

Adelaide being levelled by napalm sounds dramatic but the Adelaide Hills aren’t the city proper. They’re a mix of rural and exurban.

This channel is quickly climbing the list of my favorite subscribed educational channels with the variety of topics, research into them, and unbiased straightforward delivery of the details with some nerdy jokes thrown in here and there. You deserve over a million subs, its a crime that you don't have it already.

Man I lived near Kwinana on the west coast, my family and I fled from the Black Saturday fires on the east coast, where are the Taiwanese fabs!? Trippy video, thanks a lot

There has been of heaps of rain for the last seven days in Australia

I grew up in Canberra and almost didn't see rain for the first 8 years of my life

Remember droughts in Australia including this one ended with massive flooding rain. It's just the cycles in Australia. Droughts and flooding rains. I hope the next show is the 2011 floods...

Looks like we are up for another decade drought. We didn't really learn enough. If anything, our achievements have been negated by population growth.

Do one on the Modified Bradfield Scheme? And CY O'Connor?

So, are the El Nino and La Nina events the same effect in both the south and north ends of the pacific, or is it reversed like the seasons? People talking about weather variations up here in Canada often refer to this cycle as well, but all the charts we use cut off around the equator, just like the ones in your video.

Please do a video on saudi ARAMCO

A guy punched a man watering his garden. The man died.

if you have a natrual energy source like natrual gas, hydro power or geothermal then desalination is viable. I think dumping the slurry into a pond inland and let the sun dehydrate the water will leave minerals that could be recycled.

The Murray Darling water scheme is a total disgrace.

“..:Murmurs by a few disgruntled people.” That’s a polite way of putting it. To use local terminology, people carried on like pork chops. All of a sudden “tank water in use” stickers popped up on everyone’s front gardens, whether they had a tank or not! Although these days rainwater collection is compulsory in many places for new builds so it’s far more common than it used to be.

Look, Australia is SO urbanised. So with people living on the coast, particularly in the South East, I don't believe we focus on drought as much as you think we do. Australia is 90% city dwellers and then 10% crazy farmers who live in the interior. They can go round naming things as crazy as they want, but if you REALLY want to have a discussion around water management, it begins and ends with corporations using such RIDICULOUS amounts of water on crops that are just held up by the Government. Anyway I'm from Melbourne, so the big natural disasters for us are always bush fires. I will NEVER forget Black Saturday and any Melburnian will remember where they were during that week of 45 degree (celcius) plus weather.

thank you. it appears that desalination plants require some re-thinking and new ideas !

Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!

Mago Robbie's Australian... huh, the more you know :D

I remember the price of a steak shot up from $5 to $17 fair enough but drought finished and steak price never came down 😢 assholes.

Never mind the economics and societal stuff, I like the meteorological info. Eyes out for more of that 👀

It would have been nice to have a bit of discussion on the way that colonizers changed Australia's rivers from wide and slow moving to narrow fast ditches under the assumption that faster flow meant "cleaner" water, when the "slow" rivers of the past had flooded the areas around them, turning the land into a sponge that held water. What people need to understand is that the drought is not the problem, our farming practices & water uses are the problems. Why treat city wastewater just to dump it in the river, and pull "fresh" river water and filter that?

Rich people in toorak in Melbourne still run their water sprinklers 24/7 . They are more important than the rest of us.

It feels odd to hear people prounounce it as "Mur - ray"

It always irritates me when people reject recycled water when they have never seen the water source they use now. Animals die at the edge of the dam and there would be plenty of feces in there from runnoff. Recycled water is cleaner than tap water after being processed

0:30 I see that Kangaroo pic swap! Subtle

SA 2007. Man kills his neighbour over water his plants…….

Im stupid and read that as "Australia and the Aluminium drought".

Drought and flood will always be part of Australia’s story, though there’s no argument that it is becoming more and more frequent over the past couple of decades. Whether it’s climate change or natural cycles matters not, our approaches have to change. The fact we’re still growing cotton and rice in the Murray-Darling Basin is complete insanity. Those crops have no business beyond the tropics.

some think like 90% of Perth's water comes form decel plants

There is no a whole lot to be gained by making semi-conductors when there is no water.

You say that watering was self regulating. I can tell you that during times of water regulation if you have a green lawn your neighbours would have harassed you and dobbed you in or shamed you in some way I also notice after going overseas our toilets etc use much less water.

I've lived in Australia all My Life but I never knew Margot Robbie was from the Gold Coast.

I'm a Perthian - never been called that, though; I like it!

That's a lot of dollareydoos!

Excellent report. It's unfortunate that, despite the fact that you mostly only talk about the cyclical drought cycles and don't even touch on climate change and its impact (apart from merely listing that ever more extreme cycles), YT felt the need to inject that disclaimer context - and that acted as a red flag to the usual suspects, many of whom I suspect to not even be Australian. As for ourselves, living on a small farm, we see first hand how things are swinging back and forth ever more violently. After 3 years of "do I need to build an Ark or something?!", we've now had the driest 3 month period ever measured - and that includes long-term data from soil and tree rings, not just weather observations.