Country folk used to have a joke about farmers who stored their paperwork in the glovebox of their utes, placing it all in a shoebox at the end of financial year for delivery to their accountants.
‘That joke isn’t true any more’, says Marilyn Harvy. ‘It keeps getting tougher, the paperwork keeps getting bigger. At one stage you could say it was a lifestyle choice to live out here, but now you have to treat it as a business.’
Marilyn Harvy and her husband own Pine Point station, which at 100,000 acres is one of the larger stations near Broken Hill. Recent rain has brought hope to the local community, which has experienced the longest drought that Marilyn can remember in all her years working on the land. Not that she was about to give up.
‘You look overseas and you see that there are heaps of people who are doing it tough—there’s always somebody worse off than you’, she says.
This deep practicality is an important characteristic for survival in the country. The difficulties inherent in daily life and dependence on the elements for survival mould country dwellers into robust and resourceful people.
Nonetheless,
living with drought is an uncertain proposition for everyone. Farmers
are faced with the difficult choice of trying to keep their livestock
alive, or selling up and waiting until the drought is over. One rough
year can mean farmers won’t have enough money to plant a full crop,
or to buy back their livestock the following year—with the result
that even once a drought is over, the effects may be felt for many years
to come.
Marilyn is used to facing these difficult decisions, but she finds it hard that she cannot know the consequences. ‘You have to make your choice and be satisfied with it. Do you sell the animals, are they so unsaleable they have to be shot, or do you take out another loan so that you can afford to feed them? Not knowing is the hardest thing for me’, she says.
While the current drought has been the worst in Marilyn’s experience, she has experienced drought before, so she can see beyond it. It is a bit harder for her children to have that perspective.
‘When we sat the kids down a while ago to tell them that things were tough, my youngest couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t, couldn’t remember green grass or us being happy. It’s hard on the kids, living with that. It’s hard when I call them at boarding school and tell them how many sheep have died.’
Country
kids are confronted with death on a frequent basis. Marilyn describes
the slaughter of 35 starving ewes—as her 16-year-old son shot them,
she dragged them away for burial.
‘It can be pretty soul destroying. I’ve grown up with it, but I don’t know how it affects the kids. I hope they know that leaving the animal is far worse than killing them. If you leave them you come back and find them with their eyes picked out.’
Marilyn’s pragmatism means she understands that the death of the weaker animals at least results in more food for those that remain, improving their chance for survival.
‘It is survival of the fittest in its rawest state and you’ve just got to accept it and move on. But you never forget it either, and you shouldn’t. It’s an important part of what happened, even if it is bad.’
Despite lifestyle changes and increased paperwork, the Australian tradition of mateship still thrives in country communities. In the Gilbert Valley, South Australia, farmer and Riverton parish council Chairman John Browne watched prices for hay double from $100 to $200 a bale as the drought intensified last summer.
The prices were good news for Gilbert Valley farmers—even in drought they were still producing a lot of hay, most of which was being exported to Japan. Yet when he looked at the plight of his fellow farmers who were more severely affected by the drought, he felt motivated to find a way to help.
John settled on the idea of asking local farmers to donate a bale of hay each to send to the severely drought-affected Mallee region in Victoria. Approaches to the local Anglican, Lutheran, Baptist, Uniting and Catholic churches resulted in an overwhelming response.
‘We raised $5,500 in cash donations and received 150 bales of hay. The generosity was unexpected. I found that when I went around to collect bales of hay that had been promised, the farmers would note the extra space in the truck and spontaneously throw in a second bale.’
John found the experience of his neighbours’ generosity humbling.
‘It really opened my eyes. There are only a few of us that know exactly how much each farmer gave, and there is no way I can share that information, but I will be quietly taking my hat off to those people for the rest of my life’, he says.
Interestingly,
distributing the hay in the Mallee proved a difficult task—rather
than struggling with the problem of determining who was most in need of
the assistance, local farmers were reluctant to accept the help.
This appeared particularly odd considering that the Mallee farmers themselves had assisted another drought-affected community some years ago. However, according to John, reluctance to accept help from people outside their community is typical for farmers.
‘They don’t want be seen as sponging or not pulling their weight’, he explains.
Marilyn saw the same difficulty occur in distributing aid in her local community.
‘The money was hard to give away. People are too proud, though some are more willing to accept food’, Marilyn says. ‘I’ve worked hard in my local area to let people know that it’s only money, but some people just can’t accept it.’
Help from within the local community is often more easily received. Marilyn believes that tough times have helped to strengthen the bonds between those in her local community. She even noticed that families who did not usually socialise drew together as the drought continued.
‘The drought helps put things in perspective, brings everyone closer together. And since we’ve had a bit of rain, things around here are looking much, much better than they were this time last year.’
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