Australia farmer: 'Our river is dying'

The long-running drought in Australia's main food-growing region, the Murray-Darling river basin, has worsened.

Jan Phillips describes how she and her husband had to give up their farm work because of the drought.

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Australia is facing its worst drought in a century

It has been a very difficult year.

Twelve months ago we went out of dairying and my husband got a full-time job off the farm.

Our irrigation comes from the Goulburn river and it feeds into the Murray Darling. There just wasn't enough water to irrigate the land. We had been suffering from drought for six or seven years.

A lot of people went out of dairying. Because irrigation water was not assured, rainfall was not assured, so we couldn't secure our livelihoods.

We're the fortunate ones. Our children are off our hands. My husband found another job. But many people have not been so lucky.

Farming, dairying, agriculture have been a way of life for people around here.

We still live on the farm and my brother-in-law still runs the farm, but he is milking only 70 cows which is far fewer than what we used to milk. He's not married and has no children. He can cope a lot better.

We had been in the business for decades. My husband had been a dairy farmer for 40 years - his father before had been a dairy farmer. It was a family business. Now he's left it.

River dying

We live in an area called the Goulburn Valley. We live near the city of Shepperton in the middle of the state of Victoria. This is an area of dairy farmers, fruit-growers with lots of orchards. It's an agricultural life here.

But our main weir only has 13% water, and they're telling us now that we won't have any irrigation water at the start of the season.

Everyone around here is well aware of the scale of the problem. Even teenagers want it to rain - which is unusual!

They tell us that the Murray and Darling rivers are dying and if water doesn't come it will be irreparably damaged.

My husband's grandfather walked across the Murray river because it was so dry. This kind of dry weather is not an unusual occurrence. But now there are more people living in Australia using the water so it puts on added pressure.

Secondary impact

It's worrying to think of the consequences. Life will change an enormous amount if we don't get irrigation water for dairying, fruit and cropping.

A big city like Shepperton would die. It is based on this kind of primary industry. All the secondary industries feed off these. For example, my husband is a welder working for a company that makes fertiliser.

A lot of people see the future as being rather bleak. A lot of livelihoods are built around the fertility of this basin. I am optimistic.

I think that it will rain again and things will improve.

Unfortunately we don't know when.