'Drought Stories interview excerpt 1: Bob McIlvena talks about the ongoing drought in the Wimmera'

Bob McIlvena: First I ran out of hay, and fodder. And then the water distribution failed, the channel system didn’t run, the dam was left empty, we haven’t had any irrigation, for years. All I have left now are some calves that I’ve held onto, because, trying to hold the strain, that’s all, the Santa strain.

There was a meeting not long back, and the irrigators, because of the years of frustration by having no water, and them adapting other means, to make a living for their families, have taken up other types of farmers, farm, farming. Most of them going to dry land farming, cropping. A lot of their fences have been taken down, that used to sub-divide the paddocks, the internal distribution channels have been filled in, check banks graded out. And to make things worse, of course, in February 2009 we had the devastating fire, swept through Haven, which was made worse by the lack of any greenness around the place. No channels running, and the dams all empty.

The irrigators have taken a vote now, to surrender their permits, and sell their water allocation. And they’re currently waiting for news, from the federal government, who have been approached with a proposal to purchase it perhaps to put that water back in the environment.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 2: Charlie Gillingham talks about the impact of the drought on the Murrabit community'

Charlie Gillingham: Yes, well Murrabit, I’d say that the Murrabit community’s been, decimated was the word I used in a grant application the other day. Because when we used to go to Murrabit, every farm was a dairy farm, and there was dairy cows all the way from Benjeroop to Koondrook, and now you’d only find a dozen, I’d reckon. There’s very few farmers left over there, all the water’s been sold off, the makeup of the community has changed. I can’t think of the right word for that, but there is a word, and so, yes, the social, the social impacts it has, is huge.

Pat Gillingham: But the footy club’s going.

Charlie Gillingham: The footy club survives. Oh someone said the other day: “You never see a town go forward when their footy club folds, and they always go backwards”. So you’ve got to keep that football club, or any other sporting thing where it’s, you know socially interactive, to keep it going. So I’m involved at the Murrabit football club, kids, play netball and football and I’m secretary, or match-day secretary, or director of football operations, or something like that. It sounds good, (laugh), and actually we’re in the finals this year.

Pat Gillingham: Boy Friday, Boy Friday.

Charlie Gillingham: Mm!

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 3: Cindy Parker talks about the impact of drought in northern Victoria'

Cindy Parker: And the other thing is too, a few other people that are in the community who have got a good support team, and a good support system, sometimes even fall through their own support system’s cracks.

They’re too embarrassed to tell people just how badly off they are, or how badly they’re feeling, so (sigh) they often come in and talk to me, about, you know, just what’s going on in their life, and everything, which I find very, gratifying, I’m very grateful that they trust me to do this, to you know, tell me all these terrible things that they’re going through, but, and often they’ll come in, not even wanting any emergency relief, they just simply need to get it off their chest and as I said, have a cuddle sometimes.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 4: David Eltringham talks about the impact of ongoing drought in the Horsham region'

David Eltringham: There’s, I look at it there’s three impacts; the first is an impact on our direct works programmes, and our infrastructure; the second impact is on the general community issues, relating to recreation, and facilities; and the third impact is in the relationship to the environment, and attitude of people, living in that environment, whereby the drought has far-reaching attitude and psychological issues.

And this is the worst drought, or extended drought, dry-period, that I’ve experienced, I have been working, and I have worked, in other areas, like I worked in ah, the western part of New South Wales, which, along the Darling River there, which can get a bit dry away from the river, and I worked up there for a while, but the issues here were a lot different because you had a community that was basically dependent, on a reliable water, water supply, for the amenity of the area, and for its recreation, and obviously its household use, and that was taken away, so we have tried to make sure that we haven’t lost all of the advantages of that good water supply, and we’ve been able to maintain, and I’m pleased to say, as of today, the 30th of September, 2009, where we’ve had a remarkable change, over the last few months, we look around, and we have, maintained, kept, and not lost, any serious assets of the community.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 5: John Gledhill talks about the impact of drought and water trading'

John Gledhill: The weather pattern will eventually change back, we will end up with rain, and probably by about 2015 and something like this, we’ll be back to our normal things, but the big problem is, the government unbundled water, and allowed it to be shifted everywhere, it is now being bought, by towns, because they are too, oh, lackadaisical in not harvesting their own storm water, for reuse by the people, everybody looks at this thing: “Oh, you can’t, you reuse water”.

Water has been reused by towns, ever since, you know, these things started, in that you will take the water from say Echuca, it is treated, all the recycled water is treated, and everything else is placed back in the river, it goes down to the next town down the thing which’d be Kerang, Swan Hill, or wherever, they are pulling out, reused water, out of the thing.

If people completely, and governments utterly this thing that: “We can’t drink reused water”, it’s there. Melbourne has enough reused water, storm water, that goes out to the sea, every year, to provide all their water requirements, that they need, without having to take water from elsewhere.

And that’s the whole part of it, there’s the unbundling of water, has taken water completely out of our systems, and allowed the governments to buy it, pay big bickies, because all they’re doing is putting it on to the people that live in town that use the water, and therefore wrecking the opportunity for farmers to use water.

Because, you cannot grow something and, you cannot pay, you know, five hundred, a thousand dollars a megalitre for water, and grow feed for it, you’re better off selling on your water, because they’re paying for it, and doing nothing.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 6: Faye Smith talks about the impact of drought on farming in the Wimmera'

Faye Smith: So, I chose, about 30 people from right around the readership area, most I had known or were related to people that I knew, and asked them if they would write a column, once every five or six weeks, and so we started “In My Paddock”, and so every week we had five farmers, contributing about their farm and what was happening, on their farm.

One of the reasons I did it was because it was a common concept that farmers are always grizzling about something, and I knew that farmers had very good reason, to be concerned about many things.

Oh many townspeople didn’t understand that if you didn’t get rain when you needed it, during the growing season, that wasn’t going to help your crop.

They didn’t understand that if the silos closed at the time when you wanted to deliver your grain, that was another problem, particularly if there was a storm coming.

They didn’t understand that the cost of fertiliser was rising and that marketing was becoming a difficult issue.

So farmers could write about whatever they wanted to write about. So of course during 18 years, at the Mail Times, we covered many droughts. But oh the, as the years went on the effect of droughts seemed to alter, on, people, and communities.

Of course you can have different sorts of droughts, there can be drought because of lack of rain, there can be a drought because of too much rain at the wrong time, there can be hail storms which will devastate a crop, there can be rain and wind, which can put the crop on the ground, and then of course rain can come, and the grain can all shoot, so it can’t even be used for stock feed.

Hot weather, as we’ve seen in 2009, in the Wimmera, Southern Mallee, hot weather can come, and cook the grain, in the pod, so this has been particularly bad, for Horsham area,

Further north, Warracknabeal, Hopetoun, the grain was further advanced and so, didn’t have the same effect, but incredibly hot days, a string of 10 or more days of high 30s, low 40, degrees, and the pods, of wheat, barley, and particularly lentils, have cooked, and so, either half the grain, or half the harvest, or ruined the grain, so the prices, if it’s saleable, the prices are much lower.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 7: Leigh McCahon talks about the impact of drought on farming in northern Victoria'

Helen Stevens (Interviewer): Oh what can you tell me about the weather patterns, of this place?

Leigh McCahon: Weather patterns at Pyramid Hill are fairly typical of northern Victoria, oh 14 to 15 inch annual rainfall, although you could have fooled us a bit over the last 10 or 12 years, growing season rainfall is the most important, and we’ve been missing out a bit over the last few years.

Helen Stevens: What, when did the current drought first impact, on your life?

Leigh McCahon: I guess it’s hard to say, just when it first impacted, on our life, and I’m probably not supposed to question your questions, but I don’t look upon this as a current drought, I look upon it as a current, long, dry period, with probably one good year, and a couple of droughts,

But I guess it probably really started to impact, in the mid 2000s, we had a very severe drought in 2002, where we didn’t even take the header out, had probably one of the best years on record the next year, and since then, it’s been interspersed, a couple of years that I would call drought, with some very dry and tough ones, and the impact really would have started in say in the mid 2000, 2005.

Helen Stevens: Mm. Yes, I was only a kid in the 1940s when the dust storms were on, but it doesn’t seem to be quite anywhere near that state of drought, does it?

Leigh McCahon: I think the rainfall has probably been as bad, but we haven’t had the dust storms to the extent, mainly because of different, and improved farming practices and machinery in the Mallee, most of the dust in those ‘40s came from the Mallee areas, and with bigger machines for cultivation, and stubble retention, there hasn’t been the dust, rise from those areas, in the drought years.

Helen Stevens: That’s right, yes. Explain the changes that you and your family have made, because of the drought.

Leigh McCahon: Well I think cultivation practices have been one of the main ones, but they were coming, anyway, but probably been accelerated due to drought, reduced cultivation, right down to minimum tillage, retaining of stubbles, to hold moisture, and to prevent wind and water erosion; on the stock side, removing sheep from paddocks as the cover decreased, and putting them in containment areas, probably reticulated water supplies instead of open channels, to save water, they’d probably be the main ones.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 8: Vanessa Wight talks about the impacts of drought and politics on farming in northern Victoria'

Joy Calder (Interviewer): What do you believe are the reasons for this current drought?

Vanessa Wright: Oh, yes I think, it’s, a lot of it’s climatic cycles, like you go back, I’ve got a photo in my office, of a picnic in, I think it’s about 1914, taken up at Murrabit with them, and it’s a photo that’s around a bit, of the buggies, a new year’s day picnic of the townspeople all in the bank of the Murray River, with the dry bed, where they were having the picnic.

Now I think there’s things that do just naturally happen that, you know and they’ll come, things will come and go, and you know, sort of fires, and burning off, and grazing and things, there’s a lot of things that people try and take control of that maybe they over, try and over control,

So yes I think, oh there’s a bit of merit, probably in climate change, but I don’t think it’s something that we understand, enough, I think it’s, but it’s too political is the problem, that it’s, you know, there’s not, people aren’t necessarily into things for, really to get the right answer, they’re in there a lot of the time to push a barrow, or prove a point, which doesn’t, you know, it really doesn’t get anywhere.

But the other things, sort of, I guess talking political, the situation in this area, there’s so many things on top of each other that have, why, oh well I guess why we’ve ended up selling the cows, if it was just the drought we’d probably be still milking, if it was just the water allocations we’d still be milking, or, but the problem is that they’ve had the years of no rain, we’ve got low water allocation, the milk price, it’s, is, there’s been so low, and I still think it’s very volatile, so it’s all those things that add up, on top of each other.

And the, yes the political scene’s definitely impact on that, I think, if we had a different government we’d probably still be milking cows, too, but they’re never going to get the votes here, so they won’t, they won’t change, they don’t need to, you haven’t got the, why they don’t need, they haven’t got our seats, and they don’t need our seats, and they know they’re not going to get them, they’re never going to change, as to what it is;

So I think the, you know the water, the way that the allocations are now, that there was a dispute a while back, with the water going into Melbourne, that there was something that had happened in Melbourne, about whether they could have done something better and then the next day their, our water allocations were increased up here, which was really disappointing to see, because there hadn’t been the rainfall from the last allocation, it was purely a political move, as to why we got more water.

So things like that, I think, are really disappointing, because you can control what’s on your farm, and you can control the things, you know, that you can deal with, but when you get thrown things like that, that you shouldn’t have to deal with, or that, you know, should be a given, or if you knew what they were, if you knew what’s round the corner it’s easy, but so many of those unknown things that are changed, make it, just make it too difficult.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 9: Henry Morrell talks about the importance of resiliance and social contact in dealing with drought'

Henry Morrell: They think it was a place where this, I felt the sporting, the sporting was a means by which we could, the community could, get together, and have some fun, and just being able, it’s a vehicle whereby you could talk, you could communicate.

And I’ve got a high regard for the ability to be able to talk to each other, as a community, get oneself away from the farm, even if it’s only a day, to be able to talk to others, that are going through, and to talking together, and to be able to join hands as a community, to me they were just important days for us, to be able to play sport, and to just be able to get away, from bank balances, and just look, getting out of the office, and seeing all those things, you know, just having fun.

Um, fun seems to drain from you, when things are difficult, and I believe we thrive on fun, and farmers need to get out of their tractors, they spend a many a, a lonely hours, driving around, the tractors, and they need to get out,

And I guess one of the things that we started, back in South Australia, I met with a man and I said: “We need to get them, these men, we need to get them out of the farmers’ track, we need to get them out of the tractors, the women seem to be able to, the farming women seem to be able to come together, and organise themselves, and talk things through, maybe that’s, they’re better equipped, in that area”.

I have sympathy for the young farmers, who are very buoyed, and want to get on, and have set goals, and to want it all to happen, yesterday, but that’s not a reality, the reality is that in farming, in Australia, you will suffer some form of drought in some form.

But it’s about being resilient, and mm, equipping oneself to, to realise that this is going to happen, and to be resilient, and find ways that we are able to be strong enough to negotiate the difficult times that come, and so that has been my experience, and it’s been, I think it’s been a learning, and a great experience, and I’m a better person, for having journeyed through these times.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 10: Ollie Jane talks about salinty and the effects of water trade on farming in northern Victoria'

Ollie Jane: …that are, been salt affected, and you’ve got to remember that that salt affected area was caused by the irrigation, so by selling off the water off the poorer type soils, we find that those soils aren’t going to be salty, after a period of time, and we’re proving that now; at the moment I’ve got barley growing on ground that was declared D-class soils, and salty, and because of the drought, and the drying-out of the soil, the lowering of the water-tables, the plants can grow on it, but you need rainfall, so you’ve got to have that too, to make sure that, yes…

Pat Gillingham, (Interviewer): Mm. Yes, and some land will revert back to nature, too, which is good for it?

Ollie Jane: Yes, and but one of our problems is that there’s, water is being sold off good soils, and the A-class soils, and this has come about by economic events, whereas people get into some financial trouble, and then the only way out is that they can get a good price for their water, so I don’t have any personal experience of this but I presume that your bank manager looks at you and he says: “Oh, your only way out now is to sell some water”, and that will get them out of their financial trouble. So people that have overextended themself with credit, are selling water, but in the long term that’s going to be bad for the good soils, because they won’t be able to go irrigate them in the future, because I don’t think the water will come back to the area.

Pat Gillingham: And it’s not good for the community, is it?

Ollie Jane: Well, you see, well that’s the…

Pat Gillingham: Shire, rates, and all that sort of stuff.

Ollie Jane: Well yeah, that’s the next thing, is that this is going to have an effect, on everything within our community, and that, and that is, it extends from the supermarket, any of the shops, the schools, because you haven’t got, oh you’ve got less is, numbers, of population, you’ve got properties that have, had their water sold off them, the water has been sold, or the property has been sold, to a winery in, interstate, and they can’t transfer the water, permanently, but they can transfer it temporary, each year, to South Australia?

Pat Gillingham: Mm.

Ollie Jane: So a farm that was supporting a family, who were doing all these things going to supermarket, their children were going to school, they were playing sport, they were attending functions, that’s not happening, because we’ve got less and less people, and the water has been transferred away, from the area, and that’s crippling our structure, of our community.

Pat Gillingham: Yes, yes, yes, so it’s going to change in the future.

Ollie Jane: Mm.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 11: Neville Bell talks about past droughts in the Wimmera'

Neville Bell: Well we had a very good run of years, it was just amazing that every year was a good year, for a long time until about 1959 or ’60, and we had a very late break and crops weren’t so good, but we it wasn’t a really, a drought, and there were, and next we were, bad drought was 1967, and that was a devastating drought because stock prices collapsed, and sheep and cattle were, in some instances it was shot,

And oh but that, again was followed by a very good year, 1968. We had feed to, feed to burn, we had agisted cattle, and sheep, so the drought must have done a bit of good, spelled the ground, and then we get the good year, well farmers are back into it again, and they anticipate the good years, until the next drought.

And that didn’t occur ‘til about 1982, and that was a very bad drought, but the most interesting thing about that drought was, in 1981 it rained and rained and oh farmers would say: “Well we won’t get a drought next year, because it never follows a wet year”, well that’s just what it did do (sigh), it would not rain in 1982.

And but we lived through that, and we had nothing to do much, so we pulled down fences and built fences, to keep occupied, that I had two boys at home, and then we had the ’83, and that was really a, boom year, everything grew. So, that was some of the worst droughts.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 12: Stuart Simms talks about drought and climate change in northern Victoria'

Stuart Simms: Well I was born in 1941, and I can just remember the blackouts that we used to have, and I can remember getting caught down the paddock, and you have this blackouts, and the sand stinging your legs, and not being able to see, and it was quite traumatic, really. And of course being a kid it didn’t really affected me, I mean I wasn’t in the managerial capacity then, it didn’t matter to me (cough, excuse me).

And then of course we got into the ‘60s, ’56 of course, was the greatest flood that we’ve seen, probably, down the Murray Darling Basin, and the ‘70s and ‘80s were such wet years, and the worry then, in those days, was trying to get your crop in, without getting another downpour, and not being able to get onto your paddock for months; ‘course there was no sprays in those days, and you had to try and work your paddocks, then, for weeds and so forth, so that was the ‘70s and ‘80s,

’82 was a bad drought, but it, and they were only a single drought, and you had enough (cough) oh, carry-over hay, even seed on the ground, and all these sort of things, to carry you over a one, oh a one year drought or like that, or one or two years.

This drought is different, it’s been going on, what, 12 years now, and even though we’ve had one or two reasonable years in amongst it, it’s been so prolonged, it’s the drain on the finances, of the farmer, and particularly up this area,

I, I’m starting to be fearful now that we’re losing the seed-bank, that we haven’t got the seed in the ground, if we get good years now we’re not going to get the prolific growth, or the density of growth, that we have in other years, because I feel that we’re losing the seed-bank, and we’re going to have areas of flat, plain ground with very sparse grasses on it, simply because we’re, there’s the prolonged drought, with losing the seed bank.

Oh climate change, I see somewhere there you were talking about climate change, I’m not real convinced of climate change, I think it’s cyclic, the Avoca marshes, I remember, me old dad telling me that he can remember the Avoca marshes being dry for 13 years, they’ve only been dry 12, so far, so we’ve seen as, drought like this, in the last 100 years.

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 13: Lindsay Smith talks about river health and how farmers have adapted to drought'

Lindsay Smith: I think, ‘til we get environmental flows, and management of that under control again, and we’ve got some major problems on our river anyway, we’ve got two areas called Polkemmet, and the other one’s Tarranyurk, where we’ve got major seepage, from our Parilla sands, and perhaps we should be buying that land back and putting the eucalypts back on the top, because that’s the problem with it, it’s built up and it’s now flowing into the river. It would have flowed into the river, but it wouldn’t have flowed in at the rate it’s doing it today. So, even with the lesser rainfall we’re still getting these flows, so I think, I’d hate to see, that pollies, and the management, over-commit our system again.

John Francis (interviewer): Yes.

Lindsay Smith: And I think we should work on the lowest denominators, I have a big fear, of mineral sands, every mineral sands mine, wants 10 thousand megalitres a year, and that would wipe out all the savings of it, if it went haywire, so I just hope common sense prevails.

John Francis: Do you think that, you know, tree clearing by the early farmers, you know, when they’ve just gone in and completely denuded areas of any vegetation, has been a major contributor towards climate change, and the droughts?

Lindsay Smith: Oh it’s certainly contributed, and I dare say in the future it’ll, it will be monitored, and be able to correctly estimate what’s going to happen. It’s interesting, the Greening Australia have done some tree measuring up at Snape Reserve, because of the growth we’ve go on our early revegetation, they are checking the amount of carbon it’s collecting, trees have been measured, and sent away to Canberra for assessment, so there is a lot of work going in the background, already.

John Francis: Mm.

Lindsay Smith: But we kind of got over-enthusiastic, to clear our country.

John Francis: Mm.

Lindsay Smith: And I think if we’d done the approach today, it’d be done a lot different.

John Francis: Mm. So, as that is one of our lessons learned, and do you think there’s any other lessons that we can be, and that we can learn from what happened in past practices, and what we can do to future proof ourselves from severe droughts like this?

Lindsay Smith: Oh, I think, one of the biggest changes I see, and it always staggers me, with the amount of rain that we’ve been getting over the last few years, is the changes in agricultural methods; oh I’m seeing less crop burning, less fallowing, different methods are being used today, to, when I was home on the farm we normally worked the fallow once a month, to maintain the weeds, now that doesn’t happen today, to, some people are down there spraying their paddocks twice and that’s it, and they sow their crop in; we certainly are getting less dust storms than we used to, and we’ve been through some very dry conditions, so it would have been normal to expect some fairly good dust storms (laugh).

John Francis: Mm.

Lindsay Smith: But, we’ve still got a long way to go, yet, you know, but…

'Drought Stories interview excerpt 14: Tom Lowe talks about the impact of drought and European carp on the bird life of the Kerang Lakes'

Pat Gillingham (interviewer): And what has the drought done to your birds, this current drought?

Tom Lowe: Well, there’s virtually no waders around now, you know, there’s no lakes that are suitable for waders, unless you go to the sewerage farm, there are waders do use that.

Pat Gillingham: Now where’s that?

Tom Lowe: Just west, no east, of Kerang, and the sewerage farm, up in Swan Hill.

Pat Gillingham: Oh.

Tom Lowe: Yes, sewerage farm up at Swan Hill, was quite good. Water, but water birds in general, the drought, oh, no there’s no ducks around, much at all now, and a lot of the other water bird life too, just isn’t about. There is another reason of course too, but that European carp have ruined a lot of our fresh water wetlands, and so the bird life, have just abandoned, virtually abandoned, a lot of those lakes ffft, so it’s...

Pat Gillingham: So is the carp, disappearing?

Tom Lowe: Numbers are down, yes, reducing, but there’s still enough to…

Pat Gillingham: Damage.

Tom Lowe: To keep these, yes freshwater wetlands fairly useless for a lot of the birds that you’d normally expect to see. And they, that’s been, it’s been a disaster though, for me, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed kangaroo, in the other wetlands, when they were full of, vegetation, you know, oh ribbon-weed and all the other vegetation grew in them, that, that was great because the food-chain was there, and so the water birds, at the top of the food chain, were there in large numbers, but the carp have removed the vegetation that’s going on.

Pat Gillingham: Mm. Where do they come from?

Tom Lowe: Came from the Murray, but originally they were introduced, somewhere down in Gippsland, yes, but they got brought up into the Murray area somehow or other. Floods in 1974, they got out of the Murray, you know all up through all our lakes and so on, that’s when the problem started.

'Farmer Wendy McCormick talks to Pam Plant about the impacts of drought in northern Victoria'

Pam Plant, Interviewer: Do you have any happy memories of the current drought, anything particular that…?

Wendy McCormick: If you hold a function, quite often, you know it’s not going to rain! (laughter)

Pam Plant : Yes! Yes well that’s a good point!

Wendy McCormick: And the worst part is when you finally go to cut the crop, for hay, and all of a sudden it decides it’s going to bucket down, and then it…

Pam Plant : Yes, it hasn’t rained all winter, and then when you start doing your hay, in the October, it starts to rain.

Wendy McCormick: That’s right! And, like in last year the grain receival points, every Friday, for a month, we had rain, and it was just absolutely incredible to think that it couldn’t rain when it was supposed to but it rained, just in the middle of cropping.

Pam Plant : Can you think of anything that you have come up with to be more resourceful, to get you through the drought? Like some of the, something you’ve done, that you wouldn’t have done?

Wendy McCormick: Well, every day, when I was milking, every day for six years, since the onset of, you know, the drought, I actually had a shovel in the cowshed, that I would shovel the manure over the fence every day, which made a lovely heap for the people around town to come and get for their veggie gardens, and, you would be surprised how quick it was to wash the yard down.

Pam Plant : Mm-mm?

Wendy McCormick: And moving like you did all the time, the flies weren’t, you know, likely to collect on your face like they did when you were hosing the yard, (laugh)…

Pam Plant : Oh, very good, yes.

Wendy McCormick: So I felt that I always contributed, a part and, because of that action.

Pam Plant : Yes, yes. Have you learnt anything from the current drought, that you think perhaps should have been done, to be more prepared for it, either yourself, or the government, or government bodies, and…?

Wendy McCormick: I can really say, I am, you know might, this might be in a different light, but I am dead against these big, um spa baths, that are put into everyone’s houses these days, because to me it is an absolute waste of water, and we have been to these water protest marches in Melbourne, and my kids have only ever had a bath in the shower, with the bath water, you know, being from the shower overhead, they’ve never had a bath, as in the big bath, and I think there’s a lot of wasted water in these big towns, and I think that it’s ridiculous that they actually call on the country people to be taking water out of the storages that we’ve, you know, originally designated for the country use, as in irrigation, to be piped down to Melbourne, I think the government should be looking at bigger water storages, and I know it sounds strange when there’s no rain, but I think everything can be looked at, and oh there could be a lot of more recycling, that’s done with water.

Pam Plant : So it’s not wasted.

Wendy McCormick: Yes.

Pam Plant : Yes. It’s been taken, away from the farms, and put to non-productive use

Wendy McCormick: Yes.

Pam Plant : Mm.

Wendy McCormick: I mean people in Melbourne might wash their potatoes in the sink, for 10 minutes, just to get the dirt off them, whereas that water could be used for something that’s more productive.

Pam Plant : Yes, they’re not aware of the waste, that they’re creating.

Wendy McCormick: No, they’re not. Yes.