'Sickness' and red-rust disease in 1860s South Australia wheat from lack of local knowledge and overcropping

Binders working on a crop at Riverton, South Australia, 1900-12.
Image by Edwin Scholz, from a collection by John Clifford Tolley. Courtesy State Library of South Australia

The 1850s saw good seasons with most of the wheat coming from the fertile fields around Adelaide. Although South Australia continued to deliver half of Australia’s wheat crop, its quality and yields dropped, even in the fertile southern areas. Farmers started to realise that this loss of fertility was due to something else beyond rainfall.

A disastrous attack of red rust in the 1867-68 season led to a government enquiry into cereal disease. The commission found that almost all farmers were sowing wheat crop after wheat crop without allowing for fallow years. This exposed a lack of agricultural education.

The need for agricultural education became more crucial as South Australian cereal growing moved into the more marginal areas of the Murray Mallee and Eyre Peninsula.

But there were early warning signs in districts such as from Aldinga through McLaren Vale to Willunga, where soil became “wheat sick” due to overcropping.

By breeding adaptions to merino sheep, South Australia honed an animal perfectly suited to its conditions but also elsewhere in Australia.

But, for other agricultural sectors, it took a few lessons from drought to realise that much of South Australia’s vast lands was not suitable for farming.

And yet South Australia eventually did venture into tougher territory for grain growing. This was achieved by a government involvement that embraced research and knowledge and an individual spirit that came up with an extraordinary string of innovations.

Early colonists in South Australia were keen to expand into the vast lands of South Australia for food and fibre production for their own use out of necessity but also for trade. Cereals, especially wheat, grew well on newly cleared land, sheep were brought in from neighbouring colonies.  Horticultural crops, including many varieties of fruits and vegetable and vines, were established as favourable land was cleared.