THE DROUGHT TO END ALL DROUHGTS

That's what they are saying about this current drought. For a while I wasn't convinced that it was 'the worst'...as you all know... Queensland has been regularly effected by extreme weather conditions...either floods or droughts

Remember the poem..'.land of droughts and flooding rains'

This shows the extent of the drought at the moment. There is no real rain forecast for the near future.

But now I see why it is so...there are people in the north of this great state that are going into their 3rd year with out rain!!

Can you imagine what that must be like?

I heard a story from a 'truckie' yesterday (he was here delivering cattle)...and truckie's love to have a yarn...I asked my husband once why they are this way..and his answer was that they spend a lot of time driving and don't see people ..so they make up for it when they get a chance.

Which reminds me of a time a few years ago when we had a property out at Bollon in the south west of Queensland. We had bought cattle from New South Wales and they ended up arriving in the middle of the night around 2 am. It was also the middle of winter and it gets very cold in that part of the world.

If it wasn't bad enough having to get out of your warm bed and unload a couple of trucks of cattle ...we then had to stand around shivering while listening to the truckie's 'tall' story's......he didn't seem one bit concerned that he was keeping us out of bed......maybe he was enjoying himself at our expense.!!

Anyway, getting back to the story at hand.

Yesterday's truckie story was about a farmer and his wife up north, who because of the on going drought had completely destocked their property...all 400,000 acres of it.

There was not a beast, not a horse, nothing except he and his wife.

Drought

Can you imagine them sitting out there on their ruined, parched land with nothing. They can't leave as they would have no money to go. They have to stay and protect what is left. What will happen to people like this?

They are not alone, there are probably hundreds out there doing it tough like that ...just going from day to day, looking at the sky, hoping the rain will come.

I was speaking to my sister recently and they are really suffering with the dry as well. Their biggest problem is they are quickly running out of water.

This water problem is one of the reasons this drought is worse than others,   people can see an end to their water supply.

A dam gone dry

What to do next?

You can buy feed to feed your cattle or sheep but you can't buy water...well maybe you could but it would be impossible to cart enough water to keep a mob of cattle  alive.

A cow with a calve will drink up to 120 litres a day. In drought conditions this could reach as much as 150 litres.
Over a mob of 500 head of cattle that would be 60,000 litres a day, 420,000 litres a week and 1,680,000 litres a month.

It is not ' if ' they run out of water it is ' when '.

People on the land have an incredible ability to look at things in a completely optimistic way. They all know that it WILL rain ONE DAY. So they just focus on that event ...and just keep going, getting out of bed each morning to face it all again.

This is all the water this farmer has left.

Making decisions that would break the spirit of lesser humans beings. These decisions are based mainly on HOPE and not much else.

They know there are cut off points. Like when they have to cut off feeding their cattle because they just can't borrow any more money and they also know they are fighting a losing battle as the cattle are dying faster than they can keep the feed up to them.

And as I mentioned before they have to work out, as best they can, how long their water supply will last, so that they can sell their cattle before they have to watch them perish.

Sounds unbelievable doesn't it?  But it's a reality. It is happening every day. When you are driving to work sipping on your early morning coffee, think of a farmer going about his morning shooting starving cattle and trying not to do the same to himself.

I heard that our treasurer Mr Hockey saying that he will ' look ' at the multi million dollar proposal put forward by Barnaby Joyce to support the cattle industry..part of that being a ' rural reconstruction type bank ' which would lend money to farmers at a reduced rate...something like the rate of a home loan. His comment was,'  why would you lend more to people who are already in trouble..'

But it looks like our treasurer is looking into spending zillions to bale out our failing the car industry.

The thing that people like Mr Hockey don't seem to be able to grasp is we are not dealing with a car industry or a shop owner ...we are dealing with animals and human beings. We are dealing with suffering.

 I'm sure there is a difference between a car and a cow!

Some how we have to get the message across that things are out of control for people in the bush. They need money to keep cattle alive and them selves.

They also need support and understanding from the rest of Australia.

The good times...lets pray the storms come soon!!

Until next time