Struggle for towns to survive Australia's big dry

At Alectown, a hamlet just south of the farming centre of Parkes in New South Wales' central west, the giant dish of the Parkes Radio Telescope probes the heavens in search of life in space.

This week, the district's focus was on life much closer to home: the vast agricultural plains sweeping through the state's grainbelt, reaching through the ranges to the coast and stretching north and south into Queensland and Victoria.

Almost two years after one of the worst droughts in Australian history was declared over, this remains a parched and brittle land, with forecasts of another El Nino weather pattern raising fears that much of the continent will tip once more into a devastating dry.

Parkes has felt the bite of the months to come. In four months of baking heat that has created 150 new high-temperature records across Australia, the town last month saw thermometers rise to a peak of 28.8C - 5.4C above long-term averages for April and the hottest in almost a century of record-keeping.

On Tuesday, Parkes hosted an emergency drought summit called by the NSW Farmers Association to form new measures to cope with the looming drought. High on the agenda, with financial and agricultural crises, were strategies to cope with the human toll: families forced from the land, rural communities collapsing, family breakdowns, depression and suicide.

About 1000 farmers turned up, increasingly despondent at their prospects of survival. The National Farmers Federation demanded more help. Prime Minister John Howard, in a letter read to the summit, promised to streamline federal assistance, and announced a tour of NSW's parched west.

To the southeast, the big inland city of Goulburn, two hours from Sydney, is fast running out of water and may have to haul in massive quantities by train to survive. In nearby Canberra, arborists are felling trees as the drought weakens branches, threatening people walking beneath them.

Growing towns have put development on hold because water supplies cannot service new residential suburbs. Sydney's problems have become so acute the State Government is proposing a A$2 billion ($2.1 billion) desalination plant to turn sea water into drinking water.

In South Australia farm organisations warn that more than 80 per cent of farmers would be forced to consider the viability of their operations.

In supermarket aisles across Australia, food prices are expected to rise on a steepening curve. Meat and Livestock Australia has warned that as farmers strip their land of livestock and keep surviving flocks and herds alive with increasingly expensive feed, food bills will rocket.

Water will become an even more pressing issue for the world's driest continent, already alarmed by the grim future for many areas revealed by the big drought of 2002-03.

As the great Murray-Darling river system began collapsing and storage dams dehydrated, farmers drew on dwindling supplies to irrigate 2.4 million hectares, one-third pasture.

Even that could not stave off a 75 per cent fall in farm income in 2002, and a decline in agricultural exports of almost 30 per cent. And as the country withered, it turned to tinder, erupting into huge bushfires.

That last big drought was the product of an El Nino event, the dramatic changes in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific that disrupt climate patterns from one side of the globe to the other.

The National Climate Centre has tracked El Ninos and their effects back to the start of last century, when tracts of the continent were gripped by what became known as the "federation drought", emerging as it did as modern Australia was born from the amalgamation of its former colonies.

There have been 23 El Ninos since, the last in 2002-03. Described by climatologists as "weak to moderate", this event nonetheless produced one of the worst droughts in history, affecting almost all of the continent and compounding the effects of several preceding dry years.

Hopes of a return to better times in February last year, when widespread heavy rain officially ended the drought, vanished with the clouds. For much of Australia, the drought has not ended. Worse may now lie ahead.

Forecasters warn of another El Nino forming, creating another severe drought that for many farmers may be just too hard to bear.

In South Australia the state Farmers Federation last week announced a new task force to prepare strategies to stave off a crisis. "It is very serious," general manager Carol Vincent told the Advertiser. "This year is going to be the potential turning point for agriculture in South Australia and Australia."

Above SA's eastern border, in the sprawling Wimmera region of Victoria, farmers are demanding state assistance to top up aid announced two weeks ago by the Federal Government.

To the north, Peter Kenny, president the Queensland farmers' organisation AgForce, said 45 shires and parts of eight others were officially drought-stricken, along with 128 separate properties in a further 21 shires. Last month, financial counsellors had taken more than 350 calls from desperate farmers.

Nationally, the economy is showing signs of strain. Without counting state drought aid, the Federal Government is pumping A$4 million ($4.26 million) a week into farm support. A new study by economic consultants Econtech points to further vulnerabilities: 781,000 city jobs depend directly on the health of agriculture.

Last week, the Bureau of Statistics delivered more bad news. Drought badly hit exports in March - shipments of meat, wool, sugar and other commodities fell 8 per cent - helping to push Australia's trade deficit to A$2.67 billion ($2.84 billion), the second-highest on record.

So far the weather has been unrelenting. Bureau of Meteorology figures show that between January and last month temperatures across Australia hovered at a mean 26.9C, the hottest since accurate continent-wide records began.

April temperatures soared above long-term average maximums every day in many areas, pushing highs of up to 40C well into autumn and setting more than 100 daily high-temperature records.

The bureau's latest drought statement reports that vast areas of the continent recorded less than 20 per cent of long-term average rainfall in the first four months of the year.

A poor season and a "sporadic" monsoon has drawn a harsh line from Port Hedland in northwestern Western Australia to Bourke in the northwest of NSW, with the country above it parched by lack of rain. In the south and east of the continent, vast tracts have had poor rain for more than two years.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Goulburn, an elegant city of 23,000 sitting on the seared land between Sydney and Canberra. Dams carry less than a quarter of their capacity, with only half that available for use because of accumulated silt. Planned new borewater supplies will not compensate.

The city is already gripped by water restrictions, which ban the use of town water outside homes for any purpose, and urge residents to cut consumption indoors by 20 per cent. Companies have been asked to reduce water use by 30 per cent, with the threat of legal restrictions if targets are not met.

Weeks of rain would be needed to head off a crisis almost certain to strike in spring. As things stand, Goulburn faces the real prospect of running out of water: to survive it would need to buy in water at a cost of at least A$4 million ($4.26 million) a month, either by a huge fleet of trucks, or by rail. Across Australia, dozens of other towns and cities are looking down a similar barrel.