Anderson began her research on drought in 2003 – as the Millennium Drought was in full swing, though no one knew that then – funded by the University of Melbourne and Museum Victoria. She travelled to the Mallee region of north-western Victoria to conduct oral-history interviews with twenty-two residents. Coinciding with a significant dry period, the interviews gave Anderson a lens into the dynamic relationship between the past and present, memory and lived experience, environments and narrative. As the dry weather continued, Anderson undertook two more rounds of interviews. Both national politics on climate change and the drought intensified during this period, and Anderson began to notice that her participants were increasingly discussing the connection between the two. Climate change thus became another core thread of the book that emerged from this research, titled Endurance: Australian Stories of Drought.

Drought affected ground (CSIRO via Wikimedia Commons)The book begins by contextualising drought in Australia, examining it from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including history and cultural studies. The book's central concept of 'endurance' is woven through the opening discussion.At a national level, narratives of endurance during drought have helped to shape the 'battler' persona in the Australian psyche. These national stories have both been influenced by people's experiences of drought and have also influenced them. As Anderson explains: '[i]n terms of lived experiences, drought must be reconsidered as a cultural "site" where stories of survival, both symbolic and literal, intersect.' The connections between the cultural and material aspects of drought are explored further in her important discussion of the shifting definitions of drought across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here, she shows some of the broad changes as well as the diversity in how people have drawn the line between 'dry weather' and 'drought', and the consequences of doing so. Within Australian drought policies, the 'declaration' of drought has triggered the availability of financial aid, with significant economic and social implications for farming communities. Drought in these communities, Anderson explains, is not only a matter of a lack of rainfall but of dwindling bank accounts and, ultimately, the pressure that places on relationships and support networks.

Similarly, Anderson explores the different stakes and tensions in narratives of droughts as 'normal' and as 'natural disasters', including in policies of financial assistance. She also examines shifting ideas of drought in the sciences, from the idea of weather cycles which prevailed in the nineteenth century to the irregular influences of El Niño Southern Oscillation, which gained more currency in the late twentieth century. Anderson then focuses in on the Mallee region, introducing us to the history of the area, which developed a reputation as a difficult place to farm in the colonial period, and exploring some of the themes that came out of her own project, including the importance, and complexity, of storytelling.

The remainder of the book is dedicated to examining the interviews Anderson undertook. This discussion is both engaging and thought-provoking as she impressively weaves together life stories and scholarly analysis. The stories are grouped to explore the three themes of survival, uncertainty, and adaptation. Anderson's participants are sometimes featured individually and sometimes in pairs or groups, reflecting the diverse relationships that make up farming communities.

Sea Lake Farmer Robert McLelland (2007) Mallee Climate Oral History Collection, Museum Victoria, Jon Augier.

While the participants were from farming families, a number of them, as Anderson writes, wore several 'hats'. For instance, one participant, Andrea Hogan, was at different times the editor of a local newspaper, a farmer's wife, a farmer, and chair of recreation clubs. Another story focuses on two women, Lynne Healy and Gwen Cooke, both of whom married farmers, and who worked in a women's health centre. These roles are sensitively and subtly explored in relation to people's different experiences of past and then present drought, which in turn illuminate 'the power and paradoxes of narratives of endurance'. At the same time, Anderson examines intersecting issues of gender, national and local politics, broader cultural influences, and economic and environmental change. In relation to climate change, Anderson shows that narratives of endurance have persisted even as farmers have made changes to adapt. In the final pages, Anderson highlights the relevance of these oral histories to government policies, particularly for understanding the cultural and social dimensions of drought and climate change.

What I most enjoyed about this book was the intertextuality of different voices and the multiple temporalities that Anderson explores. This is achieved through a sustained meditation on the practice of oral history and of story-telling throughout the book. This helps to reconceptualise the monolithic stature of droughts in Australia, revealing them to be instead complex historical-natural-cultural phenomena.