Economic uncertainty and population decline was a common feature of life in inland NSW and inland Australia generally in the first half of the twentieth century, but it did not become a serious problem until the 1930s, according to a Charles Sturt University (CSU) researcher. Dr Robert Tierney, a lecturer at the School of Business at CSU in Bathurst, will present his findings at a public seminar at the University on Wednesday 8 December. “There was a far greater fall in wheat production in the Lachlan Valley region than wheat production across NSW as a whole during the Federation drought years of 1902-03 and the harsh dry seasons of 1918-20,” Dr Tierney said. “Faced with further suffering due to the Great Depression, and from the second world drought of 1937-1945, the people of the Lachlan wheat belt began to see themselves as the third generation to experience greater hardship than others in the NSW wheat belt. As a result young people left the Lachlan catchment between 1933 and 1947 in great numbers, in contrast to the rest of non-metropolitan NSW which grew. My research highlights the climatic and regional economic factors which underpinned the specific fragilities of agriculture and population in the Lachlan Catchment area.”