Bill and his family live at ‘Araluen’, 25kms towards Bingara from Bundarra, and rainfall records for the property go right back to 1926 and Bill believes this year is one of the driest ever.

“We are only on a few hundred acres and haven’t had any problems with our fresh water yet, but I have been talking to people around us and there is one bloke on 8500 acres who is down to three dams and one with 4000 down to one dam, they are having to shoot their stock, it’s no good,” Bill said.

The cost of feed for cattle is up to about $600 per tonne and reports of farmers who have spent thousands of dollars feeding stock to keep them alive are not uncommon.

Bill’s daughter Louise painstakingly records rainfall for the property everyday and sends records off at the end of the month to the Bureau of Meteorology but she hasn’t had much to record this year, as rainfall to date is only 375mL for the year.

Last year Araluen had received 603mL to date and 589mL in 2007.

“It’s pretty tough out here,” Bill said. “Everyone you see out our way has tanks on the back of their utes carting water around, we have been okay so far but if things keep going for a few months with no water we will have to do something.

“There just doesn’t seem to be any rain in sight.”

Bill and his family have lived at Araluen for almost 20 years and Bill originally came from a much wetter part of Australia, Townsville in Queensland.

“Everyone seems to talk about the weather, and I don’t know if people realise exactly how tough we are doing it, there are a few people in a bit of trouble out our way, I just hope we get some rain soon.”