On the land and in the towns they’re affected to varying degrees; some find it harder to cope. But they all agree something has changed
- Read part one of The New Normal here
If you don’t fully appreciate the complexity of rural communities, farmer Peter Schmidt is not the sort of bloke you would be expecting in the Mulga Lands. His place is 21,000 hectares – 52,000 acres in the old money – and his family have been there since his grandfather selected blocks in the 1890s. The closest town is Wyandra, a blip on the highway on the way to Cunnamulla from Charleville – a drive that reveals the disused fences of smaller blocks long abandoned as unsustainable.
Schmidt though is still at his homestead at Alawoona, its sheds and outbuildings surrounded by a metre-high levee, standing like a bad joke in their sixth year of drought. He put it in after the 2012 flood, which washed a foot of water through his house. Problem is, that flood heralded the start of the dry and it pretty much hasn’t rained since. He jokes with station hand Joe that he cursed the place and might have to break the levee to bring on the rain. But far from being a man of superstition, Schmidt is a rural scientist, with two masters degrees – one each in rural education and cattle behaviour. He has a softly spoken manner and a sense of humour born in the Mulga.
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