Qld drought appeal: The little girl who’s never seen rain

Two-year-old Francesca Hick only knows a world of cracked earth and the false promise of rain. YOU CAN ADOPT A FARMER

TWO-year-old Francesca Hick only knows a world of cracked earth and the false promise of rain.

Her family’s Outback cattle station, Antrim, near Hughenden, has been in the grip of drought for seven years.

Adopt a Farmer: Drought appeal launches in Qld, NSW, Vic

Adopt a Farmer: Confronting reality of NSW students’ life in drought communities

Adopt a Farmer drought appeal: Beenleigh school embraces farm life

Even when mum Lindy captured this stunning shot of a land of drought and flooding rains, those dark, boiling clouds turned to mist.

“We’ve learnt not to get our hopes up,’’ the mother-of-three said.

As a biblical deluge turned parts of northwest Queensland into an inland sea in February, their neighbour’s property, just 30km away, was engulfed by floodwaters. Antrim got three inches of rain, barely enough to wet the dirt.

“That’s the amazing thing about the bush. You can get so much rain in some places, and none in others,’’ Lindy said.

Francesca Hick, 2, of Antrim Station south of Hughenden, only knows a life of drought. Picture: Lindy Hick Photography

Then came the locust plague.

“We got them by the billions. Billions of grasshoppers that destroyed everything and ate what little pick was left,” she said.

“They got into the cars, the house, the rims of the tyres, everywhere. All they left was dust.’’

Who’d be a farmer?

The Hick family run 700 head of cattle on their 19,400ha property on vast black soil plains at the edge of the ancient inland sea, about 1400km northwest of Brisbane.

Prehistoric fossils and the bones of dead cattle are strewn on the basalt country, a reminder of the timeless arc of life-and-death.

“We struggle on,’’ said Lindy, 37, an avid photographer renowned for her striking images of life on the land.

“It easier to handle the drought if you just get into a routine.

“But when you think it’s going to rain, and it doesn’t, that’s when the emotions come out.

“That’s when we take a break and get away from the farm for a bit.”

Her daughter Francesca, like many young kids in drought-stricken parts, has never know the rain of a normal wet season at home.

It took a visit to the grandparents in Tully, the wettest town in Australia, to hear the alien sound of a torrential downpour on a tin roof.

Lately Lindy stopped taking pictures of farm life, something she finds hard to explain, until she was motivated by letters of support from complete strangers.

“I love the idea of Adopt-A-Farmer,’’ she said of The Courier-Mail campaign.

“We get the odd random letter and it is just such a life to the spirits. They write to us and tell us how we are in their thoughts.

“It is truly the greatest thing anyone can do. It’s lovely. It’s humbling.”

She does not buy into the debate about the widening divide between the coast and the backbone of the nation.

“Everyone is disconnected these days, not just the city and the bush.

“We all worry about our own lives, we’ve all got enough on our own plates,” she said.

Francesca Hick, 2, of Antrim Station south of Hughenden. Picture: Lindy Hick Photography

“But when someone reaches out, a high school student from Townsville, or a retired couple from Brisbane, just to tell us we are in their thoughts, it gives us such a wonderful feeling.”

Relative Patrick Hick, who runs 28,300ha Argyle station, north of Julia Creek, took his story to the Rural Press Club lunch at Tattersalls in Brisbane on Thursday.

The sixth-generation grazier and his family lost thousands of head of cattle in the February floods.

He told of a jillaroo, a uni student from Melbourne, who put her life on the line to save 15 horses.

“She went above and beyond,’’ Patrick said.

“We were on another property and this little girl, as skinny as a matchstick, went out alone into the shrieking winds and floods for the horses.

“I told her it was too dangerous, but she didn’t want them to die.

“She got them all in and built a makeshift corral next to the house, and for a week carried fodder through thigh-deep mud to keep them alive.

“She could have got helicoptered out but she hung in there...

“It speaks to the best of quality and grit.’’