Coo-ee: Three bad years

By May 1898, for the first time in 15 years, the town weir on the Broken Creek had run completely dry. Instead, Nurmurkah was forced to rely on wells.

By 1899, the town and its outlying farms were solely dependent for their drinking water on these wells.

As always in summer with the creek’s falling water levels, Numurkah, like many small country towns of the time, was at risk of its drinking water being contaminated by human faecal matter. This occasionally resulted in occasional typhoid cases.

The year 1899 was one of these typhoid years.

Typhoid is a disease caused by a salmonella variant with a recovery time that can last six months or more.

Untreated by antibiotics, it has a death rate of around 20 per cent.

In the third week of a typhoid infection, it can often be complicated by the development of encephalitis, pneumonia or bronchitis in patients.

Pneumonia is not contagious itself, but its bacterial and viral causes certainly are. They are usually passed by touching infected surfaces or through coughing and sneezing.

It is familiarly known as ‘the old man’s friend’ as it’s often seen to offer a peaceful, painless death to the elderly ill.

In those three bad years, its effects were not limited to the elderly, as a gravestone in Numurkah Cemetery demonstrates.

The gravestone memorialises the Maidment family of Sandmount farm.

Three out of four Maidment brothers, young men aged 18, 20 and 24, died in the same week in March 1902.

The unexpected and disproportionate deaths of the young and healthy during these three years was also noticed during the Spanish flu epidemic that began in 1918.

This influenza variant triggered a cytokine storm, ravaging the stronger immune system of young adults.

A cytokine storm is a pathological reaction in which the immune system causes an uncontrolled and excessive release of signalling molecules called cytokines.

Cytokines are a normal part of the body’s immune response to infection, but their sudden release in large quantities can cause multisystem organ failure and death.

Cytokine storms may be caused by viral respiratory infections such as influenza or pneumonia.

Newspaper reports for the three bad years in Numurkah stated that the cause of death was pneumonia.

Mrs Maidment and her daughter also suffered from pneumonia, but they survived. The more likely cause was pneumonia as a complication from typhoid.

During the Aids epidemic, those infected by the virus died of pneumonia, but the underlying cause of death was the HIV virus.

Typhoid can also come with wet weather if floods end by mixing sewage and drinking water.

One of the wettest years in Victorian history was 1916. In September that year it rained almost continuously for a week.

Twelve drowned in Victoria that month and hundreds of families were made homeless.

In low-lying Nurmurkah, drinking water mixed with raw sewage.

So 1916 was another typhoid year, but again the disease was masked as pneumonia.

In May 1916, Sister Mary Cassian of the convent at Numurkah died aged just 38 after a short illness.

Again, the likely cause appeared to be typhoid. Three weeks later, Sister Mary Patricia died at the convent. She was 50.

She’d been suffering from heart problems until typhoid intervened. The women are buried together.

Chlorination of drinking water as a preventative for typhoid was identified 20 years before.

Maidstone in Britain by 1897 was the first town in the world to have its entire water supply chlorinated.

Despite these advances, more Australian and Empire soldiers died in the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 from enteric fever (typhoid) than were killed by enemy action.

– John Barry