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This paper introduces Australia is Developing a Dust Bowl, an Australian film made by Ken G. Hall for the national filmmaker Cinesound Productions during World War II.1 It also introduces an image of a scaled-down reproduction of Australia’s Woronora Dam, which featured in several films of the period. The dam, this article argues, represents a broad set of ideas, many of them influenced by US conservation projects, that were being promoted in the print, film, and broadcast media of the time, and the postwar political visions driving these ideas. To identify then examine the meaning of the US ideas located in Hall’s film, this paper takes a cultural and transnational approach in order to develop new insights into political and environmental history. Using this approach demonstrates that Hall’s film fuses aspects of US and Australian national myth, traces of US Depression-era and wartime hopes and fears, irrigation mythology, and technological optimism. It shows that Australia’s wartime politicians were determined to use this set of ideas to drive debate, gain traction, and bolster their credentials in pursuit of a nationbuilding, postwar water conservation scheme. I argue that Hall’s image of a dam in Australia is Developing a Dust Bowl represents the determination of the Australian state of New South Wales to dominate the nation’s major postwar development scheme by diverting the waters of the Snowy River westward and expand the capacity of Burrinjuck Dam and develop the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.2 1 Drought Grips Riverina is the first title on the reel and features opening credits. Australia is Developing a Dust Bowl is the second title on the reel, and although there is no second set of opening credits, because it has its own opening title and presents a new narrative, I treat the two as separate films for the purposes of discussion. Cinesound Productions, Australia is Developing a Dust Bowl (1943), NFSA no. 0679. 2 The American Society for Environmental History supported the development of this paper with a travel grant to the ASEH 2012 conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Barry Muchnick, James Nash, and David Schorr provided important feedback. Thanks to Stephen Harris and Ruth Blair for feedback at Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association (ANZASA) 2012 and to ANZASA for the 2012 Paul Burke Travel Fellowship and a 2012 US Embassy Postgraduate Travel Bursary to support its development. Thanks to Ian Tyrrell and Grace Karskens for feedback on this developing paper at different times from 2010 through 2014, and to Elizabeth DeLoughrey for feedback at the US Studies Centre, Sydney 2014 Early Career Researcher Symposium. Thank you to my two anonymous reviewers for their contribution. International Review of Environmental History • Volume 2, 2016 36

international review of environmental history

Wartime political ambition behind one image of a dam in Australia is Developing a Dust Bowl (1943): US/Australian film imagery, environment, and nationalist storytelling