Just What Australia Needs — More Droughts, More Floods, More Fires
According to the recent IPCC report, Australia can look forward to more floods, more droughts, more fires, and worse — drier conditions, which means more droughts, more fires, and when it does rain, more floods. While the weather presenters on the news prattle about the wonderful sunny days, the farmers off the coast pray for rain.
The majority of Australians live in big cities on the coast. They are quite insulated from the extreme weather (unless you are up in the deep north where they have cyclone season every year). The biggest effect the drought has is when the beef and vegetable prices go up!
Out west where the food is produced, it is much more dramatic — crops dying in the fields, beasts trapped in the mud at the almost dry waterholes, or floating down the newly minted rivers when it floods. If you take a drive from Brisbane out through Toowoomba (125 km), then Chinchilla (290 km), Roma (480 km), and Charleville (750 km), you can see the country change and become drier and drier. Between Brisbane and Toowoomba, it is market gardens that grow all our vegetables. From Toowoomba to Chinchilla, it is wheat and then cattle. Out past Roma, it is drought-resistant cattle and sheep. A bit further from Charleville, it is desert.
The farmers I knew in Chinchilla when I worked there spoke of land in terms of drought. The further away from the coast you went, the less rain. You could have a property that had 3 good years in 5, or if you had the wrong spot, only one good year in 5. A sheep farmer in Quilpie (200 km west of Charleville) told me how crazy his dogs went when it finally rained after 7 years of drought — they had never seen, smelled, or felt it before. And these were the good times.
If I’m not careful, I’m going to end up sounding like Hanrahan from John O’Brien’s poem.
… “We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”
… “We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
… “There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
Except this time, he would be right! We are already at 1.4 degrees of warming.
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