Farmers turn their back on scorched earth nightmare

After three years of devastating drought for farmers across NSW, the grass is definitely greener on the other side for Forbes farmer David Kalisch.

Farmers David and Emma Kalisch with their son Jackson and dog Juno walk through their once parched property. Picture: Joel Pratley

After three years of devastating drought for farmers across NSW, the grass is definitely greener on the other side for Forbes farmer David Kalisch.

Earlier this year a haunting photo of Mr Kalisch walking into a dust storm on his property came to symbolise the harsh reality of drought. Joel Pratley, won the ­National Portrait Gallery’s Photographic Portrait Prize for the stark image, taken in January 2020.

Pratley returned to Forbes this week to capture a very different portrait: same man, same place, but now in a picture of green.

Mr Kalisch, 41, has been spared the floods that have destroyed the crops of many of his neighbours in the NSW central west and looks set to have a good season.

 

Reminiscing on the state’s worst drought on record, which ended only last year, Mr Kalisch says he knew he had to keep getting up every morning to keep the farm going. “To get up each day and to face it every day, it’s a very negative, very emotionally hard thing to handle,” Mr Kalisch says.

He and wife Emma made the decision early into the “financially devastating” period to keep their livestock, which had plummeted in price.

The 400 sheep and 160 cows and calves on their 400ha farm, which has been in the family for 42 years, depended on them.

“The only food that they got was what you gave them that day. There was nothing in the paddock,” Mr Kalisch says. “The earth was basically just dead.

“You get to a point, (where) you go so far, you’ve spent so much. Well, if you bail out now you lose. But if you keep going, you’re hoping for a better result at the end.

“It’s nerve-racking surging ahead, thinking, ‘well, how long is going to last for?’ You think we might have six months left in us, it could go for 12. It’s a gamble that you take.”

With the cost of hay doubling and then tripling, and stock worth a fraction of what it would normally be sold at, the couple were forced for several months to walk their cattle on local roads in a desperate attempt to find scraps of grass.

On the final day, one pregnant cow was so weak she struggled to get back to the farm. Mr Kalisch recalls what happened next as the “worst” moment of the entire drought.

“She walked all the way home and she walked into the paddock and sat down and, and just died,” he says.

Mr Kalisch outside Forbes in central west NSW. Picture: Joel Pratley

“When you’ve put in all those months and months, and she was going to have a calf, both emotionally and financially you feel sad that you’ve put in all that effort and lost her and that she suffered.”

Returning to the farm was very different to Pratley’s first trip, which he describes as “like being on Mars”. “It was hard to imagine how somebody could come back from that,” the photographer says.

He describes the first time he met the farmers as “really tense”, but on Thursday there was a huge change in demeanour.

“Everything was green and they’re in good spirits – there was a lot more laughter this time around,” Pratley says.

“David definitely has a bit more of a bounce in his step now, that’s for sure.”

Things turned around for the farm not long after Pratley took his original image. Just days later, the farm had a downpour. “Gradually after that, we started to get rain, and then away it went,” Ms Kalisch said.

The couple count themselves lucky that they are far enough away from the Lachlan River, which last week peaked at 10.46m just outside Forbes. Some farmers lost hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crop.

“Certainly for us … with it being so wet now, coming into next year, it’s looking good. We’ve got plenty of subsoil moisture. Hopefully, it’ll be another good season,” Mr ­Kalisch says.