The big dry: 'See us, hear us, help us’

Cattle and sheep farmer Bev Hicks breaks down in tears as she points out her dying trees.

Upper Hunter cattle and sheep farmer
Bev Hicks has never seen it so dry.

"My trees, they're 100 years old and I'm losing them," she says. "Things like that really do devastate you.”

Ms Hicks is based near Denman in the Upper Hunter region of NSW where many landholders are running out of water. And they are not alone.

Ninety-eight per cent of NSW and around two-thirds of Queensland is in drought or drought-affected, with pastures turned to rubble and the cost of freight and feed skyrocketing.

Read the ABC Rural story - “The big dry: 'See us, hear us, help us’.”