The PM has called a summit this week to ascertain the response to the drought that has hit Aussie farmers.
This year has been one of the hottest and driest since records began, and the outlook for relief from the dry conditions is not promising.
A summit is being held in Canberra this month to examine Australia's response to the drought that is devastating much of eastern Australia.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has convened the summit to look at both short- and long-term strategies.
Rural Australia is enduring one of its worst droughts on record, with farmers across much of eastern Australia hand-feeding their stock and sourcing feed from other parts of the country.
Others have had to sell their animals.
For at least the past 18 months, the skies over eastern Australia have been blue and clear much of the time.
And climatologist Jonathan Pollock, from the Bureau of Meteorology, says the outlook for the next few months is not positive for those desperately hoping for rain and lots of it.
“The next three months, October to December, it's likely to be drier than average in parts of eastern and southern Australia, especially so over Victoria and Tasmania, and it's also likely that it's going to be warmer than usual. Those two things combined, the drier and warmer end to the year, probably means a low chance of recovery for those drought-affected areas of eastern Australia,” Mr Pollock said.
A 30-year-old farmer, Sarah Hubbard, has told SBS's Insight program the signs of drought are everywhere. She said: “It is so widespread, it is everywhere. Everybody is feeling it. Everybody is feeling the pinch. Things are getting hard to find, like hay is getting hard to find, you can't really find cottonseed anymore. So all the things that you will supplement the cattle with, and, also, seed's going to be hard to find for cropping next year because nobody is growing any this year. It's horrible to see. You drive past people's paddocks, and there's not a blade of grass, the cows look terrible, and the thing you've got to always remember is that that farmer is doing the best they can for everything that they have on their property, even though it is really hard to see.”
Jonathan Pollock, the climatologist, says a combination of low rainfall and higher temperatures has made this drought particularly severe. “The dry conditions have actually persisted across south-east Australia for about the past 18 months, but, really, the interesting thing I think we've seen this time is that combined lack of rainfall and the above-average temperatures. September 2018 has just come in as the driest September on record for Australia, but, at the same time, we've had this sort of incredible heat -- maximum temperatures, the warmest on record for January through to August for Australia, for Victoria, for New South Wales, for South Australia, for the Murray Darling Basin. Yeah, so we're sort of getting attacked at both ends,” added Mr Pollock.
He says, while the overall outlook is not good, there is an even chance of some rain across most of New South Wales between now and the end of the year.
“So the outlook for New South Wales isn't all doom and gloom. We're expecting a dry three months in parts of the south along the Victorian border and, also, in the west near the South Australian border. But for most of New South Wales, the probabilities are close to 50 per cent for a wetter- or drier-than-average three months. So you've got roughly equal chances of getting a wetter- or drier-than-average October to December for most of New South Wales,” Mr Pollock detailed.
Jonathan Pollock says there is also a 50 per cent chance of rain in some parts of Queensland.
“The outlook for Queensland suggests that much of eastern Queensland is likely to be drier than usual from October to December, but there are parts of inland Queensland and in the west where the odds are closer to 50-50, where you've got roughly equal chance of a wetter-than-average or drier-than-average three months ahead,” he said.
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