Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl as a Transnational Phenomenon

This book takes the Dust Bowl story beyond Depression America to describe the dust bowl concept as a transnational phenomenon, where during World War Two, US and Australian national mythologies converged.

Dust Bowl begins with Depression America, the New Deal and the US Dust Bowl where massive dust storms darkened the skies of the Great Plains and triggered a major national and international media event and generated imagery describing a failed yeoman dream, Dust Bowl refugees, and the coming of a new American Desert.

Dust Bowl traces the evolution of this imagery to Australia, World War Two and New Deal-inspired stories of conservation-mindedness, soil erosion and enemies, sheep-farmers and traitors, creeping deserts and human extinction, super-human housewives and natural disaster and finally, grand visions of a nation-building post-war scheme for Australia’s iconic Snowy River—that vision became the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme.