[By Chris Haldane in Sydney]
Drought is a hard task master. Forty km from the Central West town of Forbes NSW, along the Bedgerabong Rd, lies the 1500 acre property of Murray Brown and his wife Katy, along with his parents Scott and Deidre. It was originally bought by his grandfather in the 1930s, and they now breed Border Leicester sheep and prime lambs, raise cattle and grow crops. Although only 20km as the crow flies from the property I wrote about in my last post, it faces different issues, largely because of its location near the Lachlan River. Water is the limiting factor in Australian farming, but with irrigation you generally have some control over its supply. The irony is that whilst today the Browns’ sheep and cattle have to be hand fed because of the drought, in 2016 two thirds of their property was completely flooded for 2 -3 months by water from the nearby Lachlan! To get supplies from Forbes, just 40 km away, they had to drive 200 km around the flooded areas to get there.
It’s hard to imagine the Lachlan River’s banks – currently so visible due to low water levels – completely obscured when the river burst its banks. Whilst it was a disaster at the time, resulting in the Browns having to rescue stranded cattle and sheep in a boat to get them to dry ground, those floods did help them weather the beginning of this current drought (said to be the worst on record) because their soil had retained moisture. However, things have become increasingly difficult since 2017 as rain has rarely fallen. They are licensed to irrigate 250 of their 1500 acres with water originating in the Wyangala Dam, but sadly there has been no inflow into the dam during the drought, so they anticipate no irrigation water being available for the coming summer. This is a great worry as their farm requires supplementation of their water supplies for it to function.
Murray feels he had his apprenticeship for the drought in the 2000s when there were some bad years. He learned then about planning for dry periods by doubling on-farm storage with more silos and bigger haysheds. But even so, they still have to buy extra feed during this drought, and are hand feeding their animals.
Grass grows better when drought breaks if livestock haven’t overgrazed, so the Browns “lock up” some pastures to avoid permanently damaging them, and hand feed their stock in the ‘drought lot’ (see below). They are also focused on maintaining stock numbers so they can recover as quickly as possible once the drought breaks, otherwise they would need to spend another 12 months building up the numbers.
Two days after I left Forbes they received about 12 ml of rain, but the drought is far from broken. That was just enough to ‘keep everything ticking away’, said Murray. It revived some wilted crops and brought a tinge of green to some paddocks, however, if they let their sheep onto them, in a week or so the grass would be all gone, so they need to think of the future.
As pasture and feed become harder to find, some farmers look for grazing on travelling stock routes. I’d only heard of ‘the long paddock’ before, but I got to actually see it on the way back to Forbes that day. It’s the colloquial term for the grass on the side of the road where cattle are allowed to graze during drought, but there are strict rules about getting permits to roadside graze, the distance the cattle can travel, having to supervise stock at all times, and compulsory public liability insurance, amongst other things, so it’s not always an easy option.
Even when the drought ends, farmers face huge challenges for a long time to come. Much of their breeding stock has gone (some NSW farmers have sold over 50% and even up to 100% of their breeding stock) so it’s going to take years to raise more cattle and sheep to get back in the market. In many cases the pastures are dead and crops haven’t been planted. Rain itself is not enough to break the drought; they need sustained rainfall over months. Local businesses are doing it tough too. It saddened me to see in Forbes so many closed businesses with “For Lease’ or For Sale signs in their windows. Recovery will be a slow process. Drought is indeed a tough task master!
