WHEN Bob Little was younger he used to hear his father pace the floor boards at night.
Doubts about drought and sheep prices kept his father awake into the early hours and young Bob vowed he'd never do the same.
"I always thought I'd sell up and move to the coast if things got that bad but I'm doing it myself now," Bob said.
The physical and emotional toll of three years of drought is plainly visible as Bob, his wife, Marg, and their sons, Kane and Aaron, offer me a cool drink inside their kitchen at Waverly, 130km south east of Cunnamulla.
It's over 40 degrees outside and the Littles have just finished mustering the last of their ewes and lambs into the yards, ready to draft up for either sale or agistment.
Another mob left Waverly the day before and despite their best attempts to push them onto water at an agisted property outside Wyandra, a neighbour has called to say the sheep are boxed into a corner.
"I'll have to have a quick chat and then go," Bob said.
"They won't last long off water in this heat."
Moving the sheep onto water will require a 700-kilometre round trip and will come on top of a series of late nights and early starts.
"We're bloody tired of it all," Bob said.
In a 375mm (15 inch) rainfall region in the bottom half of Cunnamulla's famed Salad Bowl district, the Littles' operation includes the 14,000-hectare Waverly and 19,000ha Randwick, south towards the border.
Aaron Little lives at Waverly permanently with his wife Katie and their young son Nicholas while Kane splits his time between helping out at Cunnamulla and an off-farm job.
The Little family bought the Cunnamulla properties in 1983 after wild dogs forced them out of sheep production on their home property Moomby Downs, Hughenden.
The plan was for the boys to run the Cunnamulla operation but Moomby is also drought-stricken and destocked and Bob and Marg have found themselves spending more time at Waverly to help out.
When I visited last Wednesday, the Littles were busy drafting up the last of the sheep for either agistment or sale.
"We've got about 1500 ewes on agistment at Wyandra now and 2500 sheep on agistment at Tambo which are inside a dog fence so we are pretty happy about that," Aaron said.
"We've got 2100 old ewes left here at home that we are going to sell and about 4500 lambs.
"We're going to sell the wether lambs but we're really hoping to keep the ewe lambs because they are our future."
The Little family have invested heavily in their flock which is based on Mount Ascot bloodlines and usually includes about 8000
ewes.
Keeping the ewes alive over the past three years has been a constant struggle with a flood through Randwick in 2013 the only decent moisture seen on the properties during that time.
Bob Little said there had been very few falls over 10mm, with most being just "a lot of dust and big blows".
"The grass is virtually non-existent now," he said.
"Even the low salt bush which we rely upon heavily in this country has now lost its leaf."
The family have supplemented their flock with lupins mixed with Grape Marc to get them through the drought.
The Littles delayed marking their 2014 drop of lambs when the summer rains failed to come but say the lambing went surprisingly well and estimate they have about 4000 lambs on the ground out of 6000 ewes.
Their 2013 lamb marking was not so kind with just 130 lambs marked out of 7000 ewes.
With the horrors of the damage wild dogs inflicted at Moomby Downs still fresh in their minds and reports of the predators inching closer to Waverly and Randwick, the Little family are relieved to be involved in a cluster fencing project that has been supported by the South West NRN.
Aaron Little was one of the major drivers of the 440km fence that will see 446,345ha (roughly 1 million acres) enclosed behind a 1.8m high mesh and barb wire fence.
The cluster will also be divided in half with a 64km fence across the middle for ease of management and will include seven landholders on the southern side and five in the north.
"The idea is to have it up in 12 months and we'll be excited when it's all done," Aaron said.
"A lot of people out here are at the stage where they would just leave without a fence."