Raining brings optimism after years of hard times on the farm

When the rains arrives on a farm, everything changes, from the emotions of the farmers to their financial outlook, writes Michael Madigan. Rain clouds in central Queensland

Graziers watching heavy rainfall on the horizon. Picture: Liam Driver

The clouds come in black as ripe mulberries and you just know, from the low rumbling thunder and the strange expectant hush that spreads across the windless landscape, that this is going to be a big one.

And when those fat drops begin to hit the dust near the shed and the homestead roof sends up that cacophony as rivers pouring from the sky smash into corrugated iron, everyone’s face breaks into these ridiculous, doltish grins that last as long as the rain keeps falling.

Real rain has come to much of Australia’s east coast this week and no one among up can truly calibrate the good that comes with it, whether that good be gauged in financial, environmental or emotional terms.

Without being in any way melodramatic, these rains will have saved at least one life as some ageing, weary and heavily indebted elderly grazier sits at that untidy desk on the veranda that serves as his office as the rain drums on his roof.

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And he’ll run a stubby pencil (”the wife uses the computer, I don’t touch it’’) over a few numbers including the surging Eastern Young Cattle Indicator and that monthly $12,000 feed bill which is about to cease, and he’ll suddenly feels a surge of confidence returning to his aching bones.

And he’ll ride around in the rain on the old ag-bike with the kelpie sitting up on the petrol tank and plan a winter feed crop and even begin wondering if he might take a trip to town to look at that Massey Ferguson 4600 _ the one with the front end loader.

The future brightens, all things seem possible again and that sense of renewal goes all the way to a State Government for which rain means surging tax receipts, more export dollars and an intangible return of confidence among consumers as well as an electorate which will this year decide its fate.

Cattle Farmer Tom Nixon with his dogs on Devon Court Stud on the Western Downs, is hoping for more rain to help his pastures. Photo Lachie Millard

But it is Queensland’s primary producing sector that the February rain will receive its warmest welcome and out past Miles, the ever optimistic grazier Tom Nixon of the highly regarded Devon Court Stud is hoping March will seal the deal.

On the Nixon’s property the improved pastures have sprung back into life almost miraculously after years of moisture deprivation but more rain will only bounce off sodden soil into run-off in the more water logged areas.

Graziers want a few weeks of dry weather and then some good rains in March to help ensure they, and the rest of the state, enjoy a prosperous 2020.