Australia: Five Years of Drought(56K oho no)

[tim31]

In November last year, I visited family members in northern New South Wales for an early christmas. It was the first time I had visited my sister on her turf since she had married a farmer named Simon, and I had never been out to his property. I steeled myself for some fairly depressing scenery as the area was five years into drought. I thought I'd post some of the shots I took to show the rest of the world what it was like.



Once we got west of the Warrumbungle mountain range about 400km inland, it all started looking like this.




My sister's driveway, following my mother's car. We all went out there for a family meet.




The remains of one field. 2007 was the worst harvest he'd ever had.




More of the same. It's impossible to irrigate when the river system is drying up... Because the huge stations(ranches, for North Americans) further north a sucking the basin dry for that purpose.




10,000 acres of this gets a bit depressing. This was a failed crop, but it's not all bad news. Failed crop becomes...



Cattle feed.




You wonder what convinces people to live in such a place and then the sun starts to set.




We drove 50km further west to the town of Quambone. My sister is the principal of the only school in a community of 200. This is the smallest public library in the state.




And this is the school. She tells me she has the highest IT budget per head of students in the entire state. She bullies the Department of Education to make sure her kids aren't left behind just because they live in the middle of nowhere.




Points to the first non-Australian to name this bird.




Rain clouds looked promising, but were akin to wringing a moist towel.




Nothing says 'drought' to me like a broken windmill left to ruin.



The whole experience was just fantastic, but I was left worried that my sister and brother in law couldn't continue on like that for the rest of their lives. And then not more than a few weeks after we left, it started raining across New South Wales and Queensland. On Christmas eve alone they had 70mm of rain. Simon was very pleased with this as he had been planting crop before when we got there, and the seedlings had managed to take root before the floods came. Needless to say, it's looking very green out there now.

There is hope after all.

[Shroom Man 777]

HOORAY! Your country looks like Africa, but with dumb birds!

[atg]

...and idiots who think its a good idea to grow cotton and rice on the continent with the lowest rainfall in the world.

Go us!

[Aaron]

Looks like an Emu but the head doesn't strike me as being quite right for one.

[Dartzap]

I would say Emu as well....

Also: I'm fairly sure some of those fields could contain half a dozen full sized footy pitches You could make some damn convincing Wild-West era films out there as well

[Havok]

Like Quigley Down Under?
Nice pics. It made me calm to look at them... like I could see the silence. It was nice.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Quiggly Down Under doesn't count as a western, because it WAS set in Australia. Its One of the great Alan Rickman films, though.

[loomer]

I live in one of the two areas of NSW that has been described as routinely getting adequate rainfall. This reinforces my luck.

[tim31]

...and idiots who think its a good idea to grow cotton and rice on the continent with the lowest rainfall in the world.

Go us!

Simon doesn't grow either cotton or rice; he helps to put bread and cereal on your table. Not to put to fine a point on it, but Antarctica actually has the lowest rainfall for a continent... But point is taken.

Looks like an Emu but the head doesn't strike me as being quite right for one.

You are quite right; and in fact if I'd been able to shoot one of these while I was out there, combined with my other kill I would have had, as my brother in law put it, a coat of arms.

Nice pics. It made me calm to look at them... like I could see the silence. It was nice.

It's very quiet. Better than that, and I wish I had an SLR for this(next time), but you walk outside late in the evening once the sun is well and truly set and it feels like you can see half of the galaxy overhead. It's breathtaking. Anyone who's ever gone far enough out of town to stargaze knows what I mean.

[atg]

...and idiots who think its a good idea to grow cotton and rice on the continent with the lowest rainfall in the world.

Go us!

Simon doesn't grow either cotton or rice; he helps to put bread and cereal on your table. Not to put to fine a point on it, but Antarctica actually has the lowest rainfall for a continent... But point is taken.

I wasn't referring to Simon with that remark the pics indicate that it wasn't cotton or rice in the fields. I would imagine that if someone wasn't flooding fields to grow rice/cotton then there would be a bit more water available in the system for wheat crops.

[tim31]

Well the good news is that the Murray/Darling Basin got a decent recharge over summer with the ridiculous rainfall and farms further down the line can actually benefit... As you're probably well aware, they do a lot of cotton growing at Narrabri, only 150 kilometres north-east of Coonamble... Of course, the government's propping up cotton and rice because they're good exports, but you can't eat money...

[Lusankya]

And sadly, we're not going to see any of that water in SA.

Of course, as much as we complain, we really should stop using over half of our water allocation in keeping Lakes Alexandrina and Albert fresh water. Wishful thinking says that should stop soon, though, since the water in lake Albert has retreated below the pipes, so the farmers down in that region will soon go broke. Once that happens, the government won't have to worry about upsetting any voters if they decide to make farming in the region unviable, and will be able to just remove the weir (or move it up to Wellington, creating an artificial lake and further ruining the river's ecosystem - whatever they decide seems like the stupidest idea).

... It's kinda scary when you're saying that one of the best options available would be for the local farmers to go broke, though.

[hongi]

It's very quiet. Better than that, and I wish I had an SLR for this(next time), but you walk outside late in the evening once the sun is well and truly set and it feels like you can see half of the galaxy overhead. It's breathtaking. Anyone who's ever gone far enough out of town to stargaze knows what I mean.

Yes. It's one of my favourite things about camping in the bush. It doesn't have to be very late at all, you just look straight up and the whole sky is filled with stars. Even in accessible areas like Jindabyne, it's surprising how good a view you get.

[Spyder]

Are those Cassowarys?

[Lusankya]

Are those Cassowarys?

Don't be silly. Cassowaries have bluer skin and blacker feathers. And they have helmets. Just like a hadrosaur. Plus they live in northern Queensland, and the farm's in New South Wales.

I'd also probably label Cassowaries as more dangerous.

[Zor]

Australia needs to dig cannals in western australia and South Australia connecting the Ocean to a pair massive inland below sea level evapouration basins (Artificial in the case of West Australia and making Lake Eyre permanent in South Australia). Too much continent is wasted as worthless desert.

Zor

[tim31]

In the nineteenth century there were a few expeditions made to find the vast inland sea that was expected to be there. The pioneers were, as you can imagine, bitterly disappointed. There were two other guys named Burke and Wills, supported by a substantial party that set out from Melbourne and headed for the uninhabited northern coasts. They ended up running low on food, making a dash for it, did nto actually see the Gulf of Carpenteria for the mangrove swamps, and both died on the way back.

There have been suggestions of doing what you suggest Zor, but this continent simply doesn't work like that.

As for cassowarys, you'd never see them on an open plain, not to mention out of the tropics. They're extremely reclusive.