As a drought takes hold, what is the best plan for Australia's farms?

“The sky, a great flaming oven. Grass withered; water gone; famine-stricken, blear-eyed bullocks, staggering pathetically ... Skeletons and bones everywhere.”

Bill Hannah in one of the four empty dams on his property
in Gundy, in the Hunter region of NSW. Much of Australia is
 - yet again - in the grip of drought.

So reads a tale of the terrible drought that scorched western Queensland in June 1902.  Earlier that year, Sydneysiders held a day of “humility and prayer” amid mounting concerns about the city’s water supplies. Victoria and Queensland would soon follow suit as the Federation Drought tightened its grip, according to Joelle Gergis’ new book, Sunburnt Country: The History And Future Of Climate Change In Australia.

The wheat crop that year was “all but lost”, sheep numbers halved and cattle would drop by 40 per cent by the end of the drought, which lasted from 1895 to 1902, Gergis writes.

Read story from The Age by Jessica Irvine and Peter Hannam - “As a drought takes hold, what is the best plan for Australia's farms?”