Patchy rain provides some relief to farmers
RAINFALL during the weekend has provided some parts of Queensland and New South Wales with much-needed relief.
The highest recorded rainfall was at Warrie Station near St George, which received 94mm according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
The Darling Downs and Gold Coast hinterland were the areas with the highest rainfalls, some of the Darling Downs receiving between 50mm and 70mm.
Dennis Rush said he received 30mm on his property, Hopewood, south of Texas. He runs 100 cows and will be growing 243ha of cotton this year.
“It’s going to give us a break,” he said.
“We have a number of centre pivots under oats and ryegrass that we’ve been feeding like hell and this is just going to give us a bit of a break.
“This is the only year we’ve ever had where we haven’t had a dryland oats crop.”
Mr Rush said they were at the point of starting to destock their cattle.
“We own another property in Ashford in New South Wales and we’ve only had 150mm for the year, and we’ve had to start to destock at our Ashford property so we can keep moving forward.”
Mr Rush said he was grateful for the rain they have had.
“It’s been brilliant really,” he said. “We have rainfall records going back to the early 1900s and the only other really dry year we had was 1965, and this has been drier.
“The only year we’ve had drier than this was the federation drought in 1902.”
The rain over the area was patchy with some places getting high rainfall and some receiving nothing.
“The rain north and west of Gundy over the weekend will make the biggest difference.,” Mr Rush said.
“Hopefully that’ll provide a bit of hay for those fellas down in New South Wales who are having an even worse season than us.”
Nathan Bock runs a cattle property east of Wandoan. He said the entire state had been well overdue for rain.
“It was greatly appreciated,” he said.
“I haven’t checked all the paddocks yet but around the house we received 30mm and some of the paddocks received 20mm to 25mm.
“Hopefully there’s more to come.”
Mr Bock said he hadn’t been as bad off as some, but things were starting to “not look so crash hot”.
“We had some good rain at the start of the year which got us through until now,” he said.
“This time of year you don’t expect to get much, but what this rain will do is kind of unknown yet, we need some follow-up rain.
“People with oats and wheat crops will be excited, this will be great for them.
“People who planted wheat crops a while back have had nothing, so now it should turn into a half-handy crop for them.”
Mr Bock said the only previous decent rainfall he’d had was in May.
“But there are areas that have gone much longer. I really do hope those people got some rain from this.
“It’s been very patchy rain for a long time, the whole state needs a good flood.
“Everything needs to run again,” he said.