History Council of South Australia, AGM 2024

You are invited to the Twenty-Second Annual General Meeting of the History Council of South Australia

All members of the History Council of South Australia and other interested people and organisations are cordially invited to attend the Twenty-Second Annual General Meeting of the History Council of South Australia, to be held on Wednesday, 16 October 2024 at The Historian Hotel, 18 Coromandel Pl, Adelaide, 5:30pm for 6:00pm start.

Food and drinks will be available for purchase at the downstairs bar before the meeting.

The night will feature a talk by the 2024 Wakefield Press Essay Prize winner, Amanda Wells on “Halting Chowilla Dam: a tale of drought, salt, science and politics in 1960s South Australia”

Abstract:
Chowilla Dam was proposed in 1960 by Premier Sir Thomas Playford as the solution to South Australia’s water woes. By the time its construction was put on hold in 1967, the era of grand engineering spectacles had passed, Playford was out of office, and the River Murray basin was in the grips of a severe drought, causing water quality and quantity to plummet. This talk will explore the tale of the doomed dam, and examine how shifting sciences, political-economics, and ecologies saw the once lauded plan fall by the end of the 1960s. The talk is based on the 2024 Wakefield Press Essay Prize winning article “Halting Chowilla Dam: Salt, Science, and River Murray Politics in the 1960s.”

Bio:
Amanda Wells is an environmental historian whose PhD research with the University of Newcastle examines the environmental and more-than-human history of citrus growing in the Riverland in the 1950s and 1960s. Amanda is an active member of many Australian and South Australian history organisations, including the Australian and Aotearoa NZ Environmental History Network, the History Council of South Australia, the Friends of South Australia’s Archives, and the Professional Historians Association (SA). Amanda lives and works in the Barossa Valley, on Ngadjuri Country.