Droughts have been a constant feature of life in rural Australia but never before has it been brought so close to everyday metropolitan life than the one that began with the declarations made in April 2013.
Little did the people living in the shires of Boulia, Diamantina, Flinders, McKinlay, Murweh, Paroo and Richmond know then that those declarations would last until this day and beyond.
Joined progressively throughout that year by most of the rest of southern, central and north western Queensland, highways became flooded with road trains filled with cattle as worried producers began destocking thanks to a combination of wet season failure and the live export ban fall-out.
Agents were turning back cattle from sales and trucking companies were calling in drivers to help move stock. By July, prices for lightweight yearling steers had plummeted to 105c/kg, or a price per head of $68, and agents were urging producers to "pull up".
Longreach agent Richard Simpson was one of those who lived on adrenalin for three years, saying it was "absolutely full-on" as people urgently sought solutions.
You had to try and help people not to panic in their mind
- Richard Simpson, Longreach stock and station agent
"For everybody concerned, it was hectic," he said. "A grazier sits on a property thinking he's the only one; well, there would have been 50 all together, and that's what the agents were dealing with, that's what the transport companies had to deal with, and you had to try and help people not to panic in their mind."
Foreclosures
By the end of 2014, claims that 46 properties in the Longreach, Muttaburra and Torrens Creek/Prairie districts were being repossessed by banks ricocheted around the internet, and emotional crisis meetings demanding rural reconstruction were called in Winton and Charters Towers.
Western Queensland had become the focal point for urgent assistance by the middle of 2015, hosting then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott on the banks of a dried-up dam at Longreach where he announced what became the first of direct cash injections to local councils to help haemorrhaging rural economies.
It was later reported that from 2011 to 2016, some 1500 people left the central west. Around 700 jobs were lost in the same time frame, equivalent to a loss of $100 million, and the number of primary school-aged children in the region had halved since 2008.
In the face of news in 2015 that western Queensland was nearly empty of stock and facing a half-billion-dollar reduction in revenue, threatening the foundations of small towns dotted across the grey landscape, groups such as Rotary district 9630 in the south and the newly-formed Western Queensland Drought Appeal began tapping into the desire of urban Australia to help.
National appeal
A national drought appeal got under way, bringing corporate Australia and hundreds of thousands of dollars to the west for horse racing and a Paul Kelly headline concert, showing for the first time how tourism could bolster flagging economies.
The following January, and again in April 2016, the hundreds of truck drivers that made up the Burrumbuttock Hay Runners brought the nation to tears with record-breaking hay lifts, delivering not only physical sustenance but food for the souls of those in drought.
Fears for people's mental wellbeing grew as the drought wore on and grew in size - by March 2017 an astounding 88 per cent of Queensland was drought-declared, the peak so far - and the disjointed nature of assistance measures became federal election issues.
Drought began spreading east and south through NSW and one psychological service geared towards assisting people in remote areas was receiving 50 calls a week, 1320 texts in one month alone, from a largely male clientele presenting with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.
Failed plantings
The Lockyer Valley and Southern Downs shires were drought declared in May 2018 when farmers such as Nobby's Melvin Mengel experienced two failed summer plantings and a failed winter crop and were looking down the barrel of no income for yet another winter.
Granite Belt graziers were changing management decisions almost weekly in early 2019 to cope with unprecedented dry conditions, and by October, Traprock stonefruit growers were making the difficult decision to strip their trees of fruit to ensure their survival.
Annual rainfall deficiencies are currently at record levels in Queensland's south east.
In response to the national scale of the disaster, Prime Minister Scott Morrison gave the MP whose Maranoa electorate has experienced the drought in full, David Littleproud, oversight of government policy on drought and he says it has evolved for the better.
As a bank manager his clients used to open up letters with interest rate subsidy cheques but these days there are farm management deposit schemes and loan products as well as the Farm Household Allowance safety net.
Mr Littleproud said primary producers had recognised the need to move away from subsidisation and had embraced loan products and the direct stimulation of communities.
"We've funded charities more in this drought," he said, adding that the government was the first to look to future droughts while the country was still coping with the current one, citing the Future Fund and its program of providing funds for dam building.
One of the mayors working alongside his droughted community is the Barcoo shire's Bruce Scott, who complimented the government response but said ongoing strategies needed to be implemented by politicians that were more focused on what the right thing was to do, rather than the ballot box.
"Well thought out and guaranteed economy-building activities are needed, such as building roads to provide infrastructure and employment," he said. "Then we wouldn't need reactionary programs."
Cr Scott was still complimentary of how governments had handled what he described as a drought that was unprecedented in his time, and said the Australian public had been magnificent in its response.
While people were resilient and being more innovative every year, the current drought's magnitude was testing all the systems.
"The most fundamental need is for access to fodder and lick - when that's in limited supply, it makes it almost impossible to manage drought," he said. "You won't change drought, what you will change is how you manage them."
Along with the Barcoo shire, Quilpie has been unrelentingly drought declared since mid-2013 but the personal experience of the mayor, Stuart Mackenzie is that the drought in the first decade of the millennium was much harder to bear.
"Nothing since 2010 has been equivalent to what we went through from 2001 to 2009 - we only had two years of average or above rainfall then, and this decade we've had five average or above years.
"But if you went to the southern part of the shire, their experience has been much worse this decade, so it's very difficult to generalise, and that's why it's so difficult to have policy that covers all needs."
The harrowing drought experience of the first decade resulted in at least half the properties in the district being sold once it rained at the start of the new decade, with severe flooding in 2010 the last straw.
The debt load taken on by the new generation of graziers placed them at a disadvantage when drought began again so soon.
Cr Mackenzie described the government response as the best it had ever been, saying money in the form of infrastructure building schemes had allowed people in his shire to build exclusion fences and profitably run sheep and goats despite the weather.
"I don't remember long term programs before, or direct payments being made to councils.
"That's why drought declarations were once so important, so people could get subsidies.
"What's happening with this drought is better than handouts that can encourage bad practices."
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