On the land and in the towns they’re affected to varying degrees; some find it harder to cope. But they all agree something has changed
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| An olive grove on Sommariva station, owned by Karen McLennan and her son Michael McLennan. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
The Guardian
The new normal?
How climate change is
In the first part of a new series, we take you through the current conditions, and then put them in context with other severe droughts in Australia’s history.making droughts worse |
His place is 21,000 hectares – 52,000 acres in the old money – and his family have been there since his grandfather selected blocks in the 1890s.
The closest town is Wyandra, a blip on the highway on the way to Cunnamulla from Charleville – a drive that reveals the disused fences of smaller blocks long abandoned as unsustainable.
Schmidt though is still at his homestead at Alawoona, its sheds and outbuildings surrounded by a metre-high levee, standing like a bad joke in their sixth year of drought.
He put it in after the 2012 flood, which washed a foot of water through his house. Problem is, that flood heralded the start of the dry and it pretty much hasn’t rained since.
He jokes with station hand Joe that he cursed the place and might have to break the levee to bring on the rain.
But far from being a man of superstition, Schmidt is a rural scientist, with two masters degrees – one each in rural education and cattle behaviour. He has a softly spoken manner and a sense of humour born in the Mulga.
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| Scientist farmer Peter Schmidt with his partner Kathryn James on Alawoona, near Wyandra , Queensland. Monday 20 August 2018. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
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| Alawoona station with homestead and levee, owned by Peter Schmidt and Kathryn James. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
“Well, it’s unreliably reliable,” says his partner, Kathryn.
‘Dry eight years in a row’
Schmidt first started thinking about climate change after seeing a program on the astronaut Neil Armstrong who, before he went to space, thought the earth’s atmosphere was like the peel of an orange. In the pictures of space, Schmidt could see that the thickness of the atmosphere was more like an onion skin, and it stayed with him.
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Alawoona, near Wyandra, Queensland.
Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
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It is the middle of winter when we drop in, and though the fine day stretches over the place like a shroud, there is a chilly wind that blows through the mulga. Schmidt welcomes us into a small closed kitchen as he loads some old gidgee (Acacia cambagei or stinking wattle) into the wood stove and offers us a coffee.
Schmidt has lived through many droughts but it’s the big ones he remembers – 1958, 1965, 1983. While southern Australia suffered through the Millennium drought during the noughties, up in the Mulga Lands, Schmidt says it was “dry for eight years in a row”.
Every one is different but this time Schmidt has noticed one change from previous droughts has been the higher temperature.
“The essential thing was there were two or three periods there where the temperature was above 40C for 15 days in a row and it just sapped all the moisture out of the soil,” Schmidt says. “That’s the difference between this drought and the others.”
He had 100mm on the backblocks of his place last November, 59mm in March and very little since then.
It doesn’t stop with one rainfall
Drought has long been a part of the Australian climate and features in Indigenous stories and history. Indigenous agricultural and land management practices, documented by historians such as Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage, consider drought as a subjective notion – that is, it’s a state of mind. This is replicated among today’s landholders, reflected back in comments like these: “the only thing we know about drought is that it will end”. That is, it is a period that needs to be managed, like any other.
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| Donkeys guard sheep against attacks from wild dogs on Andrew and Louise Martin’s station, Macfarlane, near Tambo, Queensland. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
By this measure, south-west Queensland has experienced almost seven years of dry times. Yet when Guardian Australia visited the region, locals were keen to reject some commonly held assumptions. Drought is not uniform. Parts of Queensland have been in drought for seven years but it does not mean those communities have not had any rain. Drought doesn’t stop with one rainfall. Even in NSW, which is 100% drought-declared, some areas are not strictly in drought. Each region responds differently to drought and has different assets and challenges. All of the community is affected by drought, not just farmers. Businesses, shops and social events can close down as people hunker down and stop spending. Not every farmer is male – businesses are mostly partnerships – and not every farmer is on her last legs.
Many farmers have taken advantage of rain when it does come, by making hay and stockpiling other fodder. Many are careful to protect their pastures and therefore their soil by selling or locking up livestock and feeding – a practice known as drought lotting – in dry times. Others over-graze and accelerate land degradation. This explains why driving through the countryside you can see one side of a fence is as bare as a board and the other with foot-high pasture. And yet, no matter how much you prepare, it is hard to manage for seven lean years with a business, bills to pay and an average farm debt. Land management is key.
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| Andrew and Louise Martin on Macfarlane station. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
Summers ‘so scorchingly hot’
Four hours north of Wyandra, Louise and Andrew (Marto) Martin are sheep growers on the Mitchell Grass plains near Tambo, 860kms north-west of Brisbane. Looking out over the high grass, it doesn’t look too bad, certainly not the desert landscape pictures that metropolitan audiences are used to in drought. Macfarlane station is on an ancient inland sea – the Martin’s fossil collection contains ammonites and Huon pine, spat out of the black soil plains that expand and contract depending on the water content.
Both Martins work the farm, while Andrew is also mayor of the Blackall-Tambo region. This year they got a bit of autumn rain and made 200 bales of hay. They reduced their stocking rate to match the season, as much as is possible with lambing ewes. They’re not in favour of what Marto calls “agrarian socialism”, believing that subsidies create dependency.
“The best way of dealing with drought is accepting you are going to have one,” Andrew says.
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| Andrew Martin drives along an exclusion fence on Macfarlane station. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
“It’s quite unusual to get over 40C here but this last summer and the last couple of summers have been so scorchingly hot,” she says. “You can see the water being sucked out of the dams, sucked out of the soil, sucked out of my life and you can’t plan for that.
“The way to plan for drought is you just have to make a decision and if you haven’t got enough grass, you sell [stock].”
‘Policy adverse to diversification’
Karen and Bill McLennan and their son Michael are in the Mulga Lands on the highway to Roma, just outside Charleville. Their diversification plan was an olive plantation – Sommariva Olives – made into oil, soap, tapenades and other products. They are trying to stay agile, in the government’s words, to drought-proof. Bill and Karen also work in the panel-beating business in Charleville through the week; they spread themselves thin in an effort to survive the climate and the conditions.
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| Karen McLennan and her son Michael McLennan. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
“You do get a bit sick of it, she says. “You often say, I want to get out. I have had enough, I just want to get out. But you can’t really sell when it’s this dry, you have to wait for the rain, and then hopefully, if you want to get out, you get out then when it looks nice. But probably everyone else thinks the same way so the market will be flooded.”
They find government policies frustrating, the rhetoric encouraging farmers to diversify while erecting hurdles, or as Michael says, “government policy is actually adverse to diversification, it’s crazy”.
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| Sommariva station, a cattle and olive business outside Charleville, Queensland. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
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| The entrance to Sommariva station. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
“Like my husband says, when we are in drought, this whole area is in drought,” she says. “Our business in town struggles as well, because people can’t spend money in town. We get hit there as well as out here.”
Pressure has increased on the family after the bank revalued their properties and stock as a result of the downturn in conditions, which changes the interest payments.
Like all the farmers we speak to, they appreciate the city’s donations, though they have not received anything. Hay is tricky, given once you start feeding cattle, you have to keep going. One or two bales will not last long.
One of the big movements in farming practice over recent years is towards grazing practices that respond to climate rather than keeping a set number of stock no matter what the climate. There are a number of farmers now who sell down stock and close down for dry periods but this requires a certain equity level. For the McLennans, it is not an option.
It’s easy to say you need to destock going into a drought – but you can’t“It’s easy to say you need to destock going into a drought, but you can’t,” Michael says. “The cost of getting into one of these places, you have to keep producing because if you don’t, how do you meet your loans? What is your income? In drought, costs go up, but cattle prices go down because no one else can buy for the next year.”
Michael McLennan
North west of the McLennans, Doug and Rachelle Cameron live on the old station of Nive Downs, originally over 738 square miles with its own post office and general store. It was split up in the 1960s and the couple have been on 34,000 acres north of Augathella since 2004.
Conditions were pretty good for the first few years, then it flooded before sliding into drought. They have cut their herd down from 1,300 to 900 and are preparing for the possibility they will not get their usual summer rain. In a normal year, the Cameron family gets 19 inches of annual rainfall on Nive Downs, yet near the end of August they have only had six. Talk turns to what normal is.
“The new norm seems to be drier and hotter over the years we have been here, with our average summer temperatures,” Rachelle says. “I wouldn’t say [climate change] is not happening. It seems to be all or nothing in the country.”
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| Doug and Rachelle Cameron and their children Stirling, 11, Ella, 8, and Grace, 6. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
Around Augathella, they grow their haystack in summer and cattle eat it down in winter. By autumn, they know whether they will have enough feed to get through the winter, and for the past five years it has never been enough, so they have sold off cattle.
“This year is worse than every other year. We are missing all that growth, lately it’s been late rain, with a [short] eight-week window to grow before it cools out. You are not getting bulk feed through and that’s what hurt us in the community.”
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| Doug and Rachelle Cameron and their children Stirling, Ella and Grace at a feeding point on their property, Nive Downs. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
There was no redundancy package because the employer was not large enough. Dave was reeling from the job loss but Margie got active. The couple, in their late 50s, were carrying a bit of debt from the last drought when they were left unpaid for contracting work. So while looking for a new home, Margie also contacted their bank to apply for hardship provisions which the bank duly provided. But when a good friend gave them some money to tide them over, the bank dropped the hardship provision.
Margie applied to Centrelink for Newstart, but given the couple have had various micro businesses, the application process was arduous to prove they had no hidden assets. She also contacted high profile drought charities who told her because they were not farmers, they could not help. Sixteen weeks after losing their job and home, they were still waiting for Newstart.
The only assistance they have received is from the Country Womens Association, which pays up to $3000 for household expenses such as fuel, power, insurance and the like. Another city based charity arrived with groceries, lining up donated goods like a supermarket at a local hall.
“The government needs to look after people who become unemployed with the drought,” Margie said. “There is no focus on contractors, the small businesses, it’s hard to get Centrelink assistance and those people end up leaving town.”
The dry weather also places pressure on regular social events such as picnic races, campdrafts and other gatherings, which are important economically and socially. At a time when people need to keep an eye on others, the usual events can disappear from a town calendar, having a material effect on the state of mind of its inhabitants.
‘Women get depressed as much as the next man’
Christine McDougall is the director for mental health, alcohol and other drugs for the South West Hospital and Health Service under the Queensland government. Based in Roma, her patch is one of the largest health services in the state, covering 320,000 square kilometres, but there are only 29,000 people scattered across that vast “corner country”. McDougall has been a mental health nurse since 1974 but she says it makes her cry to drive around Charleville and Cunnamulla and see the effect on the community, first of the floods of 2012, which wrecked the soil and land, and now the latest drought.There are no mental health beds in the south west, and people are transported by the Royal Flying Doctors Service if necessary. The service aims to keep people in their own community, using local hospitals and providing full support as much as possible, via telehealth consultations and regular visits by clinicians.
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| Service director of mental health at Queensland’s South West Hospital and Health Service, Christine McDougall, at her clinic in Roma, Queensland. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian |
Links
- The land falls silent: Australian farmers battle life without rain
- 'It's dire': farmers battle their worst drought in 100 years – photo essay
- Australia's drought crisis and farmers' stories of anxiety, fear and resilience
- If you’re talking about drought but not climate change, you’re not doing your job, PM
- Australian Landscape Water Balance
- Climate Change in Australia
- Temperature anomaly data, rainfall maps, rainfall anomaly data
- The cancer eating away at farms
- Interactive: 100 years of drought in Australia
- Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years
- Is Australia’s current drought caused by climate change? It’s complicated
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