Next up in this session at the AANZCA 2025 conference is the great Rowan Wilken, presenting a longitudinal study of news reports about dust storms in Victoria between 1992 and 2024. Dust storms are not uncommon in Australia, and exacerbated by periods of drought in arid and semi-arid areas; major storms are frequently covered by Australian news media. The focus of this paper is especially on dust storms in the Mallee, in northwestern Victoria.
What are the patterns that emerge in such news coverage, then; are there fixed formats for there coverage, or are there seasonal patterns to the journalistic coverage? This study examined coverage in The Age and the Herald Sun as well as the rural weekly The Weekly Times; in total, some 115 articles (including news stories, letters to the editor, and other formats) were identified for analysis (and the data sources are somewhat unreliable over this timeframe). Such articles tended to be more common in the Australian summer, with articles during the winter largely being more retrospective than dealing with current events.
Dust storms are largely characterised either as ordinary or extraordinary; extraordinary storms are described as terrible, terrifying, extreme, and especially bad, and the focus here is often on the more unusual cases when such storms extend far enough to impact on Melbourne itself. Such extraordinary reporting also groups these storms with other forms of extreme and wild weather occurring at the same time elsewhere in the state. Such storms therefore are seen as an anachronism and dysrythmic event.
Reporting of dust storms as ordinary tend to be more matter-of-fact; they treat these as standard weather phenomena and cover them as part of the general weather reporting. Such reporting often also draws on the memories of long-term residents, emphasising the ordinariness and presenting dust storms as part of the standard rural experience.
A final way of reporting on dust storms focussed more on the agricultural challenges they present, and the need to change some agricultural practices in order to prevent them.
This points to the reporting of dust storms as following a complicated set of overlapping patterns, cycles, and rhythms, including seasonal changes, differences between rural and city imaginaries, and other aspects.
