All Eyes On The Weather

"It had been playing on my mind that we are not having a harvest. With no rain predicted, you have to make a decision."
"As of Monday, my wife and I have accepted that we are not having a harvest. That is hard. It is heart-breaking."
"Until then you are looking to hope. Every time they predict rain, it doesn't come. It just sucks the energy out of you. You start getting your head around getting more debt. My wife still struggles with the notion that you can do everything right and it all comes down to the weather."
"We have always been able to harvest a crop before and then you have good years that help you through the bad."
"Our turn will come on too. I hope we are still in the game to take advantage of it."
James Hamilton, sixth generation farmer, southeast Australia

"I think the long-term future of drought assistance can't be divorced from the judgement that ultimately has got to be made about the sustainability of agriculture in certain parts of the country in the face of climate change."
"Just throwing cash at farmers [government relief packages]  in what seem to be increasingly frequent droughts is ultimately not helping the farmers, as well as being a waste of taxpayers' money."
Saul Eslake, economist, vice-chancellor's fellow, University of Tasmania

"There is a fair wedge of the farming community that is starting to suffer mentally. Financially they may be OK -- they can borrow money if they have to -- but the sense of failure is a big thing for them.
"They think they messed it all up, having to sell all the sheep or the cattle off the farm."
Tim Wiggins, stock agent, Narromine, Australia

Pastoralist Lachlan Gall checks the water tank on his property north of Broken Hill in outback NSW. 100% of the state is impacted by the drought. Photograph: David Mariuz/AAP

Farmer Hamilton felt that he had no choice but to bite the bullet At age 47, a man whose family had been farming the land close by the inland town of Narromine, west of Sydney, where his farmland inheritance lies, whose family has locally been farming the land for 150 years, it was impossible at this juncture viewing the barrenness of his land, that he could continue that tradition. That conditions of weather; lack of rain leading to serious drought, ensures that the tradition of farming is no longer feasible.

Although he still holds out hope for the future, that something may change and the weather turn around to reflect what it once was, enabling his fields and those of other farmers to once again yield the crops they had depended upon for their living, for the time being that does not reflect reality. Reality is that his farm fields are now devoid of crops, the wheat crops usually covering the fields are but tiny shoots scarcely rising above the hard-packed soil. In his sheep paddock the pond is at ten percent capacity.

The hard choice was made that the 475 sheep will have to go; the Hamiltons can no longer afford their feed. Anything green that did manage to creep above the soil has been browsed by the arrival of hordes of kangaroos, desperate to find feed, moving in from the west, where conditions are even worse. The drought of 18 months' duration and counting recalls an earlier drought of 1902. New South Wales declared the entire state in drought last week. Residents are restricted to three-minute showers, and two weekly wash loads in some areas.

Australia as a whole has seen a drop of 20 percent of its former total of 123,000 farms, since 2006. The average age of Australian farmers is now 56. Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had promised relief valued at $12,000 to each struggling farmer. "It is designed to keep body and soul together, not designed to pay for fodder", he explained of the proposed payments. "I think there's just no understanding of what people need and how dire it is", responded Edwina Robertson, campaigning for support for drought-affected farmers, declaring the package "very disappointing".

Photo: Storm clouds are gathering at a property at Silvervale, west of Ipswich, in south-east Queensland. (Supplied: Sarah Woodforth )

Nature, however, had a little bit of a relief gift for parts of New South Wales on Saturday and Sunday, where copious amounts of rain fell in some areas, causing hope and exultation in area farmers. Two days of rain, it is generally acknowledged, is no compensation for a year and a half without rain. The drought conditions will not be lifted simply because a rainy weekend occurred. But hope springs eternal, and many farmers visualize the possibility, however remote, of a new pattern possibly emerging....

Australian Broadcasting Corporation