Drought eases in Australia

May 18, 2007, 1:51 GMT

Sydney - Parts of inland Australia in drought for 10 years were hit with soaking rain Thursday and Friday, providing relief for hundreds of despairing pastoralists.

Some of the driest, most remote parts of Outback Australia received their best rains in more than a decade with more than a quarter of the annual average rainfall falling within 12 hours.

Grazier Terry Smith of Scarsdale sheep and cattle station outside the mining town of Broken Hill said: 'We've had almost 2.5 inches (63.5 millimetres.) It's about a quarter of the area's annual average rainfall. It's bloody good rain. There should be a few smiles around today. My dams will be full now, which will give me water for 12 to 18 months.'

One of the driest towns in Australia, Wilcannia, in the far west of the state of New South Wales, was deluged with more than 50 millimetres of rain.

Pauline Kohe, who checks the range gauge in the tiny Outback hamlet of Pooncarie, where heavy rains have not fallen for more than five years, said: 'The hailstones just got bigger and bigger. A lot of them were the size of golf balls. They reckon they have never seen anything life that out here. The ground was covered like snow. It was so loud, you could not hear. All the buildings out here have tin roofs.'

Margaret Hughes, who runs a sheep station in the area said: 'We can now take showers again, instead of washing out of a bucket. We have been washing out of buckets for two years.'

Despite the rains, Australia remains in the grip of its worst drought on record.

Three of the nation's largest cities - the national capital Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane - are now so short of water that bans are to be placed on the use of any tap water outdoors.