Dorothea Mackellar's poem My Country romanticised Australia as a land of droughts and flooding rains, but on the inland plains of Queensland and NSW, there's not a lot of romance about.
No one is reciting poetry. Everyone is praying for rain, and buckets of it, after two-and-a-half years of drought.
Rob Turnbull usually runs 22,000 sheep, a smaller beef cattle herd and 2400ha of crops on his 21,450ha property, Bando, near Lightning Ridge in northwestern NSW.
Mr Turnbull reckons his place has had only 101mm this year and 127mm for 2013.
He has hand-fed his stock for two years, and is clinging to what's left of his core breeding cattle and sheep.
He was forced to sacrifice some of them at the abattoir just to keep the rest alive - up to 40 years of breeding wasted on the killing floor.
It's too dry for his usual cereal crops, so there is no chance for profit or feed for the stock.
He says he is $3.5 million in debt.
"I've made absolutely not one cent out of (livestock) in the past few years," he said.
"With the cropping side, we need a full profile of moisture, and by that I mean 10 to 12 inches (250 to 300mm) of moisture in the ground over two or three falls, then we can sow a crop around the first week of June next year.
"If that does happen, we need more rain through July and September so that we can finish the crop off and get it harvested in November, and market it, and then our first income from farming in this area will be January 2016 - and that's if it rains.
"We need something that we can go on and trade with or that's it, we're out the door."
About 90 minutes north, Ben Hill and his family run Oakey Park, a 9000ha sheep, cattle and cropping farm near Dirranbandi in southern Queensland.
He says he's had only 38mm in the gauge since March. "Enough to wash the dust out of the gutters and into the water tanks," he jokes.
To alleviate the cost of trucking in stock feed, he's pulling down the mulga on his land to give his animals something to eat.
"The countryside is just so dry and so denuded. It's got a long way to go to recover, and we will need a lot of rain," he said.
Like Mr Turnbull, Mr Hill is down to his core breeders and can't plant cereal crops.
He said he has considered walking away.
"I guess it does cross your mind but it's a great place to raise a family. It's a great life," he said.
"The challenges you face are always going to be there. You've got to see your way through them and come out the other side, but this one is pretty tough and we need all the support we can get from the banks and financial institutions to survive."
While thankful for state and federal government drought assistance, both men say more is needed.
A 50 per cent transport rebate, designed to help farmers truck feed from distant areas, was capped at $20,000, Mr Hill said.
"Earlier in the year we were carting hay and grain from Condobolin. We ran out of that $20,000 fairly quickly. It helped, no doubt about that, but it's not enough," he said.
Mr Turnbull said a five-year federal farm concessional loan scheme, offering up to $650,000 at four per cent interest, could hurt farmers because they may lose favourable interest deals with banks if they take the concessional loan, only to later return to the bank.
"Physically, emotionally and financially, everybody has reached the end of their tether. There is no light at the end of the tunnel at this stage," Mr Turnbull said.
"There's an old saying that when the farmers haven't got money, nobody's got any money.
"Some of the businesses in town have lost 60 per cent of their trade. There's a machinery place in Walgett that had 14 people and they only have three now.
"We need an injection of something just to keep the communities together."
Mr Turnbull, a fourth-generation farmer, said he had little choice but to battle on.
"We'll keep fighting until we can't fight anymore. This is what we know," he said.
Mr Hill said there's still hope.
"I'm still getting a couple of meals and day and I'm getting smoko on a good day. There is always someone out there who's a lot worse off than you are."
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