WAYNE Lowe’s 2000 hectare property about five kilometres north of the village of Graman is where he found himself with a front-row seat when a hailstorm about 1.5 kilometres wide hit the area on the afternoon last Saturday.
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For Mr Lowe it was a case of some good news and some bad news, but fortunately the good news outweighed the bad.
“I had to go into Inverell to get a part fixed on Saturday morning and I was going to start sowing Saturday afternoon, but I got caught up, and by the time I got home the hail hit,” Mr Lowe said.
“I was pretty lucky, I’d weaned my lambs a couple of weeks before and I had most of my machinery in the shed.”
Mr Lowe said the storm hit between 4pm and 5pm and dropped about 40 millilitres of rain with it.
“The hail absolutely covered the whole ground, it was probably to a depth of about 5 to 7 centimetres. It decimated the large Box trees about 200 metres up from my mailbox. It stripped a lot of them. Not only my place either, but (it hit) the two properties north of me as well,” he said.
Mr Lowe said he was not sure how much further it went, but the hail was golf ball-sized and he had heard it was larger in other places.
“I believe there was light hail in Graman, and that there was more hail back out through Delungra way in different places,” he said.
Born and raised in the Graman area, Mr Lowe returned ‘home’ about a decade ago. He said it is the worst hail he had ever seen hit the Graman district.
“For the amount of hail that was on the ground it definitely the worst.
“I believe there were some buildings damaged. I’m in the process of getting an assessment done,” Mr Lowe said.
“I had a paddock of oats in and I’ve had about 50 hectares, that I know of, that has been affected by the hail. I’m still in the process of going around to check my stock.”
