Australia has a dry, extremely variable climate with just 100 years of high quality temperature and rainfall observations. This project will greatly extend our records of annual climate variability from Australian documentary records and early weather station data for AD 1788-1900, and annually-resolved palaeoclimate data from AD 1500. This will provide the first multi-proxy reconstructions of annual rainfall, termperature and pressure variations for south-eastern Australia. It will allow recent climate variations to be put into longer-term context, providing an essential foundation for managing future climate change.