4 
seafaring men, with a few honourable ex- 
ceptions, as Dampier and others, either failed 
to observe, or at all events to make record of 
what they might have. I allude to these 
storms, because it is on occasions like them that 
rare opportunities for observations and record 
present themselves. The atmospheric symp- 
toms and disturbance, both before and at the 
time of the cyclone, are strongly marked, violent, 
and beyond all possibility of dubiousness. No 
room is left for conjecture or speculation, and 
then is the time to store up information for 
future use. Thus, if all similar storms, previous 
to the 1839 one, had been duly marked, the 
doomed ships would never have left port, and 
no lives nor property would have been lost. 
To turn awhile from the consideration of 
the weather as it affects the seafarer to 
that portion of the subject more imme- 
diately concerning the agriculturist especially 
in the colonies, viz., the rainfall. This is a 
matter that has been more or less carefully 
recorded in New South Wales since the year 
1788. This was a year of drought ; Captain 
Flinders, from 1782 to 1792, found traces of 
drought, and bush fires, wherever he landed 
on the coasts of Australia. In 1797 a severe 
drought visited Westernport, near the future 
site of Melbourne. A change now set in, and 
in nearly every year from 1799 to 1806, 
there were high floods. The Hawkesbury 
rose 101 feet at the town of Windsor ; 
wheat rose to 80s. a bushel, and 
there was almost a famine in the colony. These 
floods continued, more or less, till 1810, when a 
drought set in, and in 1811 water was sold at 
6d. a bucket-full in Sydney. From this date, 
until 1826, the floods were more prevalent, at all 
events thought more worthy of record than the 
drought, the Hunter River rising 37 feet in 
1820. However, from 1826 to 1829 the weather 
was again dry, and formed the most fearful 
and long continued drought that has afilicted 
Australia since it was settled, and fourpence a 
gallon was paid for water in Sydney during 
1829. In 1830 was the first great flood for 
eleven years, and Windsor, on the Hawkes- 
bury, was again a small island for the time 
being. From this date, however, dry weather 
again set in, and after several years of more or 
less dry, commenced the terrible drought of 
1838 and 1839, which almost exterminated the 
stock of sheep and cattle in the colony, and 
dried up the great Murrumbidgee itself, killing 
the fish, which putrefied in the bed of the river. 
This was followed again by floods, which in 
1811 made their appearance in Moretcn Bay, 
as well, raising the Bremer 70 feet, on- which 
occasion the feat of swimming from Ipswich to 
Brisbane was performed by a man who came 
with a letter asking for relief for the Govern- 
ment station there ; this flood rose twenty-five 
feet higher than the 1857 one. From this time 
till 1850 there was rather a superfluity of rain 
on the whole ; but 1850 was all but a rainless 
year, and the noted Black Thursday of February, 
1851, was nearly the closing scene of that 
drought. Floods again became the order of 
the day, and in 1852, 'in the month of June, 
occurred the one that swept Gundagai away. 
I will not follow the records any further, as 
from the date last named the seasons are 
almost a matter of memory with us in MorCton 
Bay, and although we do not suffer from the 
extremes and long duration of them that New 
South Wales does, we still have had our share 
of drought and flood since that time. 
I have been thus lengthy on this part of the 
subject, in order to illustrate what has been 
learnt of the cycles of wet and dry years in New 
South Wales for the last eighty years. 
The result of these observations (for which 
1 am indebted to an article by Mr. J evons, of 
Sydney,) appears to be that the seasons in Aus- 
tralia run in alternate wet and dry cycles of 
about twenty years each, that is to say for 
twenty years more or less there will be a few 
floods, but long and severe droughts will be the 
prevalent form of weather — the floods being 
neither long nor heavy. Again, in the wet 
cycles the floods, though interspersed (so -to 
speak) with drought, will be the prevalent 
weather, being both frequent, long-continued, 
and heavy — the droughts being few, short, and 
comparatively trifling. The last cycle of dry 
weather found a termination about the year 
1840, since when there has been but one serious 
drought. We may look now, therefore, for an 
early setting in of weather more remarkable 
(for very many years to come) for drought than 
flood, that is, if past experience be any guide 
or test as to the future. 
Herein is seen the great distinction that 
marks the climates of Europe and Australia. 
In England these cycles are marked by ex- 
tremes of heat and cold, and in Australia by 
extremes of flood and drought. The hottest 
year of the century in England was 8 deg. 
warmer than the coldest. No such variation 
has ever been observed in Australia in the 
annual mean temperature of any place. On 
the other hand, the rainfall of England does 
not fluctuate year by year in anything like the 
extreme manner that it does in Australia, and 
yet the average difference between the hottest 
and coldest year in Australia scarcely reaches 
2 deg. 
The climate of Australia generally is affected 
by two great prevailing winds, the one being 
the great westerly wind that blows for 9 months 
in the year, from the Cape of Good Hope to 
Cape Horn, and winch affects all the southern 
colonies ; the other is the steady easterly wind, 
which is met with all up the east coast for the 
greater part of the year, and which is the more 
marked the farther northward we go. 
The westerly winds of the Queensland winter 
cannot, I think, be identical with the first one 
spoken of. They originate within a few hun- 
dred miles of the coast j donbtless attracted by 
