FOR the people of the Buloke Shire, moods ebb and flow with the weather. Rain is like therapy.
After more than a decade of drought, mallee scrub only sparsely litters the 8000-square kilometres it once covered like a carpet.
But while the scrub recedes, the social and economic problems grow.
Eight thousand Buloke residents are spread among the main townships of Birchip, Charlton, Donald, Sea Lake and Wycheproof, equating to one person for each square kilometre.
Hobsons Bay City Council formed a friendship alliance with the farming community in May with the aim of building economic and social links between the city and bush.
From the farmers, to local business, shops and schools, the drought touches everyone.
The Watchem Pub is having a tough time staying afloat because fewer people live in the town, which means no footy team, and less drinking.
A Birchip farm machinery dealer, among other struggling enterprises, made just 60 per cent of its 2006 budget.
“If we were in Bourke St (city), we would have blown the budget,” said O’Connors spare parts manager Gavan O’Donnel.
And farmers can harvest a huge paddock to reap only a tarp full of return.
To make matters worse, three separate car crashes last year threw Donald into townwide soul-searching.
One person who has witnessed the effects first-hand is Donald’s Uniting Church lay pastor Margaret Russell.
The first incident was Victoria’s deadliest car crash in a decade at a notorious intersection near Donald.
Although the seven killed were not residents, it was an intersection through which locals regularly drive, and it could have happened to any one of them.
The emergency service crews who attended were local volunteers unprepared for the carnage.
Mrs Russell said the two other crashes, both single car collisions, killed two young local men.
“It really depressed the mood of the community,” she said.
So Mrs Russell, her husband John and several locals organised a dusk concert in November to “celebrate the strengths we have as a small community”.
Some 800 people, more than half Donald’s population, turned up for the free barbecue and entertainment.
Events like this, and rain, help to lift the mood of people doing it tough.
Mrs Russell points to statistics that indicate four lives are claimed by suicide every day in rural Australia – double the national average – and 100,000 rural people are depressed.
“They equate crop failure with personal failure, and don’t understand that it is just nature,” Mrs Russell said.
But farmers are also doing their utmost to help themselves.
Innovation has become a way of life.
Some say that 30 to 40 years ago there was so much money in agriculture farmers were rolling in it.
“You could buy a farm and pay it off in a year,” one farmer said.
“Now it would take 20 years, if ever, to pay off.”
Another farmer said they knew “not to put all our eggs in one basket”.
Whether it’s using the salt water underground to cultivate seaweed, setting up desalination plants to ensure fresh water or diversifying farms to rear animals such as quail and pigs rather than sheep and cattle, the survival techniques are endless.
Then there’s Birchip’s amazing water recycling system that saves the community $30,000 a year, and the determination of the town’s Donald neighbours that led to their discovery of ground water under the football field.
James Goldsmith, a project officer for Buloke Shire Council’s economic development unit, said a drought normally occurred once in every five years.
But these days only one in five years is considered “a good year”, he said.
Despite the hardship, there have been sources of hope, including compassionate donations from far-flung businesses and individuals.
Mrs Russell’s biggest challenge is getting people to accept the generosity.
“Country people tend to be very independent. They’d rather go without than take charity,” she said.
“They’re not rushing around wringing their hands and proclaiming disaster, but it has forced some people off the land, it’s forced some people off the town.”
However, with summer behind and the cooler weather on the way, the mood is sure to lighten.
“It’s amazing how the smallest bit of rain affects people. It puts a bit of a bounce in the step,” Mr O’Donnel said.
“It’s a bit like social counselling.”
