https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/12/getting-barer-by-the-day-...



leaving rural communities in the dust
Farmers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on hay as the promised winter rain is pushed back until June


Sam Neumann’s father saved his earnings as a shearer to buy their farm, Redgums, near Truro on the eastern side of the Barossa Ranges in South Australia, 55 years ago. It’s grown into a thriving sheep farm. But this year, Neumann says they have culled any unproductive stock and the remaining 400 merino ewes are lambing in bare paddocks.

“It’s just red dirt,” she says.

“You feel like you failed, and you don’t know what you could have done differently or when it will end.

“It is really heartbreaking, because they told us we’d have a break in April, and then they pushed it back to May, and now they’re saying there’s no good rain, maybe for another six or eight weeks.”

The last meaningful rain at Truro was recorded in November 2022, and the tally for the first four months of this year is a paltry 33.5mm.

It’s a similar story across South Australia and Victoria, where farmers are braced for drought conditions to worsen.

I'd love to be able send some of our rain. Starting to feel like Babinda here. Rain every day, months on end..

Many people said that the Victorian premier Steve Bracks
wasted money on the Wonthaggi desalination plant - before 2007 when he quit.

Our population went up and now we have a drought.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Desalination_Plant

Cost

The capital cost for the project was initially estimated to be $2.9 billion in the initial feasibility study; this was later revised to $3.1 billion[26] and then to $3.5 billion. After the winning bidder was announced it was revised to $4 billion.

Operating costs are to be charged by a private firm over a 25–30-year period and are estimated to be around $1.5 billion. This cost includes labour, replacement of membranes, chemicals costs and energy, and it was initially estimated at $132 million per annum.[27] Unlike previous water infrastructure works in Melbourne, the plant will be built and operated as a public-private partnership.

We don't realise how lucky we are.

Go to Paris or London and the water is undrinkable from the taps -
I tried in both cities and every time I spat it out.
It tastes like water from a swimming pool full of chlorine.
They recycle sewage water - yuck.

You have to buy expensive bottled mineral water.   

Been in a mental and philosophical drought for years now.  Doesn't look like ever recovering.

The Drought is by design…

Particularly all last summer/autumn our skies were blasted day in and day out…

Then hit with HARP - if you heat up the upper atmosphere then the clouds don’t come in carrying the rains…

This was happening over a lot of parts of Victoria as reported from other people who take note on whats going on in the skies above them…

Not as much spraying this year - or not directly over the top where we live - for instance - i didn’t directly see any spraying on the weekend but with the north wind it did blow in on top of us - then chopped up with HARP…

People better start waking up or we are going to have food shortages