Around 90 per cent of the vines were burnt, along with trellis infrastructure and fencing. The irrigation system melted.

It was just one fire in a fire season that now stretches to eight months of the year, and one of the extreme weather events that has hit farms across the region in recent months.

Further north in the Granite Belt, where I am wine-maker at Sirromet Wines, we had the summer from hell.

We had rain in mid-November and then it stopped. We're a summer rainfall region and we had a summer without rain. About 10 days ago we finally received the much hoped for downfall of 26mm, but for many it was too little too late.

The fact is that Australian farm businesses must adjust to the hotter temperatures and extreme weather events buffeting them from every angle if they want to stay viable.

Moving south won't avoid this - apart from the substantial economic or social cost of relocating, climate change is slowly and steadily impacting on every region in our wide brown land.

It's imperative that all agricultural industries come together to share new techniques and new ideas.

In the same way the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year told us that it was no longer a case of one solution to climate change, but rather every solution, we need all the tools we can in our toolbelt if we're serious about staying here for the long term.

The Managing Climate Risk in Agriculture forum being held in Stanthorpe on April 3 is a great example of this. I'll be speaking there alongside experts from horticulture, mixed farming and across the agriculture and climate spaces broadly.

My session will focus on research into new grape varieties. In 2013 I toured 50 regions in Europe as part of a Churchill Fellowship to see what varieties might suit our region.

I was especially interested in varieties that could cope with the extended spring frosts, warmer winters and unreliable rainfall that we have come to expect. The tour was informative both in terms of finding new wine varieties but also around climate.

The Europeans I met were much more concerned about climate change and its future impact than we were back in Australia at the time.

Since returning to Australia I have contributed to the Vineyard of the Future project, which features 60 varieties, chosen for their bunch formation, resistance to disease and their harvest timings, available now for grafting.

There is no single best option for northern Australia - we have a diverse range of climate conditions across the state, and what works well in the New England region, for instance, is unlikely to suit the Granite Belt surrounding Stanthorpe.

Often this means exploring varieties that are not mainstream. There are marketing benefits to this option - young people, like my daughter, are often excited to try more unusual wines.

I've worked in 16 wine regions across Australia and New Zealand, but I'm especially proud of the uptake of new varieties in the New England and Granite Belt regions - we're leading the Australian wine industry in this respect.

Unlike some of the more traditional wine regions of Australia, we're not restricted by what's gone before: we're free to choose those varieties that best suit our conditions.

I've seen agriculture tackle a lot of challenges since I joined the Australian wine industry in the 1970s. The climate challenges ahead of us, however, are our biggest yet. Let's come together on April 3 and work on tackling them together.

Mike Hayes is Director of Viticulture at Sirromet Wines, one of the largest wine producers in Queensland, is Adjunct Professor in Agriculture, Computational Sciences and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern Queensland and is a Farmers for Climate Action supporter.

He will speak at a Managing Climate Risk in Agriculture forum in Stanthorpe. See www.farmersforclimateaction.org.au/events for more details.