Australia: Too much rain, and not nearly enough

By MALCOLM BROWN
January 6, 2010 WAYNE DUNFORD, 59, has copped it both ways – flooded out at his cattle property at Brewarrina and enduring conditions so dry at his home property at Parkes that the small amount of rain he has received since Christmas has been swallowed by the dust. Like many others in the Parkes district and in southern NSW, Mr Dunford has seen most of NSW drenched in the past few days, giving relief to thousands of farmers. But he has virtually missed out. He stood on his parched 1600-hectare property, Lynton Hill, 25 kilometres west of Parkes, yesterday, looking at the effects of just 38 millimetres of rain. Only days earlier he had become bogged while trying to check on the 1000 head of cattle he has on his 6000-hectare property, Marran Plains, in Brewarrina. In the end, he had to fly over in a helicopter to ensure they were surviving. ”North of Brewarrina on the Culgoa [River] and the Bokhara [river] it is a lot more desperate and a lot of stock will have been lost,” he said. … Mr Dunford bought Lynton 34 years ago and went into business producing merino ewes and fat lambs, and cereal winter crops such as wheat, barley and oats. But he has seen some fearful droughts, including one in 1982-83 when he had to send his stock on agistment to Inverell. He had dry periods during the 1990s but since 2001 there has been virtually continuous drought. ”It breaks your heart,” he said. ”We have had good falls in that time but then it just shuts down. Last year we had one of our best starts ever, but after July the rain stopped, we lost our winter crops and the rainfall for the year came to 325millimetres compared with the average of 525millimetres. ”Out of the last nine years, we have delivered grain in three years. ”I know people in the district who have had years of nil return or negative income. One fellow sowed 4000 hectares for an outlay of about $500,000 and he got a return of about $200,000. You just cannot keep going like this.” …

A tale of two towns: too much rain, and not nearly enough