Australia farms hear pitter-patter of cash as drought breaks (Feature)

By Sid Astbury Jan 7, 2010, 5:00 GMT

Sydney - For a week in December, it hardly stopped raining in parts of inland Australia where it had hardly rained in years.

The deluge broke a 10-year drought, bringing a promise of good harvests and better bank balances. The storms also gave heart to farmers fearing climate change was driving them off the land.

'You couldn't get a better Christmas and New Year present than some good rain like that,' said Brendan McNamara, a farmer at Hughenden, 1,400 kilometres north-west of Brisbane.

Downfalls of 40 centimetres in the week after Christmas were recorded at some properties, the most in more than 100 years. Some got a drenching they suspected might never come.

Mick Laughrey - a wheat farmer in Gunnedah, 475 kilometres north of Sydney - was ecstatic about day after day of rain. 'It was just a dust bowl last week as we hadn't had a drop of water in 12 months, not a drop,' an almost disbelieving Laughrey said. 'Our dam is half-full now. Now we can start planting.'

Rain drumming on tin roofs lifted the spirit of those clinging to a life on the land.

'Farmers become very optimistic as soon as they see some rain, so the psychological impact is really enormous to give farmers hope that this year might be the year that rewards them for all their effort,' said Charles Armstrong, president of the New South Wales Farmers Association.

He noted that some of Australia's 120,000 farming businesses had suffered crop failure year after year after the drought took hold in 2001.

Agricultural exports were worth 32 billion Australian dollars (28 billion US dollars) last year, a sum that could rise by at least 3 billion Australian dollars in tandem with rain gauges on farms.

'The value of rain at any time is quite enormous for agriculture,' Armstrong said. 'It's only another month, and we'll be starting to look at what crops we can put in for winter.'

Farm water storages drained by the drought have been topped up, giving many farmers enough water surety for two years of planting. The moisture level in soils close to powder have popped back up, ensuring run-off into storages if there are follow-up rains.

The inland flooding, described by observers as of 'biblical proportions,' has also replenished underground water reservoirs that some farms and townsfolk suck up through bores.

Bourke, a hardscrabble farming town 775 kilometres north of Sydney, had only five months' worth of water in its drinking water reservoir until the rains came. Rationing had already been in place and set to get more stringent.

Now, the restrictions are off after nearby falls of 45 centimetres.

Bourke Mayor Andrew Lewis, who runs a sheep and cattle property, said the rain meant the grass would grow and farmers like himself would not have to sell underweight lambs off cheap or buy fodder for them. Flocks that had been reduced in number to accord with the carrying capacity of the land could also start growing again, he said.

'It's fantastic,' Lewis said. 'We were able to get our sheep off the low country before it rained, so we didn't have any trouble there.'

Others were not so well-placed and have lost tens of thousands of sheep and cattle to drownings. Helicopters were brought in to drop feed to stranded animals, but many were lost.

Fencing torn out by flooding needs to be replaced and thousands of kilometres of dirt roads repaired. Machinery is damaged, and there are even farmers hand-feeding their livestock because their pastures are waterlogged.

But complaints were rare.

'Everyone seems pretty right,' said Ian Hampton, who manages the bar at the Lyceum Hotel in Longreach in central Queensland. 'The rain is going to do us more good than harm.'