The O’Connor children, like the children of any farmer, were well aware of the weather and the effect it had upon the family farm at Valencia Creek. In their letters to the ‘Young Folks’ page of the Weekly Times, they wrote of rain and dry spells, floods and fires. The two most prolific letter writers were Margaret (b.1894) and Hannah (b.1898).

Margaret wrote in 1910 of a dry spell and the benefits brought by the arrival of rain.
The weat...