Australia’s drought - the cancer eating away at farms

From ground level, Australia's drought looks like a featureless, brown dustbowl, but from the air it transforms into an artistry of colour and texture as the land cracks under a blazing sun.

Farmer Ash Whitney stands on the back of his truck as he throws out hay to his cattle in a drought-effected paddock on his property located west of the town of Gunnedah.

Circular dry plough tracks resemble the concentric circles in Aboriginal dot paintings that tell of an ancient mythology, starving cattle queuing for feed look like an abstract painting and their black shadows stretching across the land a surrealist image.

But for farmer Ash Whitney, there is no such beauty, just blood, sweat and tears as he struggles to feed his cattle, cutting the drying branches of Kurrajong trees - a last resort during the worst of droughts.

"I have been here all my life, and this drought is feeling like it will be around a while," says a despairing Whitney, whose property near the town of Gunnedah is on the Liverpool Plains, a usually fertile area now withered having received the lowest average rainfall in nearly 30 years.

Read the Reuters story by David Gray - “Australia’s drought - the cancer eating away at farms.”