Lucky country in meltdown

Farmers are worried and many may have to use Government assistance to quit their farms. Picture / Reuters

Dead kangaroos line one of the arterial roads linking Canberra's southern suburbs, roughly at the rate of one every kilometre. It is a grim message for the Australian capital: drought is driving the 'roos from the bush into the parks, reserves and lawns of the city.

Yesterday, water restrictions came into force in the hope less usage and spring rain may help preserve levels at the dams that keep Canberra alive. With a 50 per cent chance at best of good seasonal rain, the city is bracing itself for a further round of steadily tightening summer restrictions.

An hour down the highway to Sydney, the parched city of Goulburn is even more worried. For the past two years harsh restrictions have banned all outdoor watering, including lawns and gardens, pulling household consumption down by 30 per cent.

But with dams at just 25 per cent of capacity and a long, dry summer ahead, this still may not be enough. If sufficient rain does not fall, water may have to be trucked or railed in.

Further south, in the Victorian Goldfields city of Bendigo, one of Australia's driest Augusts on record has reduced water storages to their lowest-ever levels. For the first time, the city council has followed Goulburn and banned all outside use of water.

To the north, the water crisis has become so severe it forced itself into the present state election campaign. Premier Peter Beattie has assumed responsibility for water supplies and planning, with proposals ranging from desalination to pipelines, and an impassioned debate over the use of recycled water.

Across Australia, most major cities have also applied restrictions and begun urgent hunts for long-term solutions. Perth, suffering a 15 per cent decline in rainfall since the 1970s, is building a A$350 million ($407 million) desalination plant and is considering piping water from the Ord River in the tropical north. Similar debates are raging in Sydney and Melbourne.

Farmers are becoming more worried. A survey by Rabobank last month reported rural confidence at its lowest for four years, back to the despondency of the harrowing 2002 drought. Almost 60 per cent fear a dry summer will hammer their businesses, and many expect to use Government assistance to quit their farms.

And along the eastern seaboard the spectre of huge bushfires is beginning to glow. Last week, well ahead of the start of the official bushfire season, fire-fighters battled hundreds of outbreaks between Stanthorpe and Rockhampton in Queensland.

In New South Wales the outlook is especially grim. More than 90 per cent of the state is drought-declared with little real prospect of the kind of spring deluges that will be needed to significantly reduce the risk.

The NSW Rural Fire Service, the world's largest, is already placing its 70,000 volunteers on notice of a likely hard summer, beginning the rounds of pre-season briefings and exercising its large fleet of firefighting aircraft. Huge Erickson Aircrane helicopters, capable of lifting 9000 litres of water in a single load, will again be flown in from the United States.

Assistant Commissioner Rob Rogers said intermittent coastal rain had not helped ease the potential fire threat to the state. In some cases it had hindered preparations by frustrating hazard-reducing burning over the winter in vulnerable areas.

In forested areas firefighters have also been watching dieback with concern, as trees become so stressed by dry conditions they begin shedding limbs or dying. As well as pointing to the looming summer conditions, these forests become potential tinderboxes.

"This sort of water deficiency isn't fixed by a few showers of rain," Rogers said.

"It doesn't raise the water table to ensure that the water the trees draw from on a regular basis is able to be accessed."

Worse, the grim outlook has been heightened by Bureau of Meteorology predictions that NSW is likely to have a potential doubling of extreme fire weather days this summer, where searing west and northwest winds push temperatures to 40C and above, and drive humidity down below 10 per cent.

"We're quite concerned about the summer ahead," Rogers said.

Even if the worst expectations are not met, the danger of fire will remain high. Last summer was relatively quiet - but NSW firefighters still faced 22 harrowing days of extreme risk, battling dozens of outbreaks. On New Year's Day a string of fires threatened the city of Woy Woy north of Sydney, while others destroyed 10 homes, farm buildings, 25,000ha of farmland and 20,000 sheep in the Junee district, in the state's southwest.

Extreme weather also ignited Victoria and South Australia, stretching fire services to their limits and hauling in firefighters from other states.

What is critical now is whether the weather pattern known as El Nino emerges. The warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean is a phenomenon that occurs every four to seven years, changing weather patterns and usually dehydrating large tracts of Australia.

El Nino was associated with the devastating drought of 1982-83 that hammered farming and lit the Ash Wednesday fires of February 1983 that killed 75 people, incinerated 2000 homes and destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland and forest. El Nino also triggered serious droughts between 1992 and 1995 - during which fires raged along the NSW coast, killing four - and in the summer of 2002-03.

The Meteorology Bureau's National Climate Centre is more pessimistic than a month ago, when it considered Pacific indicators to be "neutral". It now says the risk of an El Nino is increasing, with the Pacific warming, a marked fall in the strength of the ocean's tradewinds, and below-average late-autumn and winter rainfall across southern Australia.

Even if ocean warming is not sufficient to trigger an El Nino, the centre says existing conditions will make it drier and warmer in eastern and northern Australia for the rest of the year. The Meteorology Bureau is predicting a warmer-than-average spring, with below-average rainfall in many areas.

Newcastle University hydroclimatologist Professor Stewart Franks, supported by US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration data, is more certain that the worst will happen.

"According to the latest evidence, we face a 67 per cent chance of an El Nino occurring by December," he said. "The outlook is pretty grim. Since 2002 we have waited for a cold La Nina event [the reverse of El Nino] to refill the reservoirs. Unfortunately we are still waiting.

"The potential disruption to urban and rural areas of a second El Nino without fully recovering from our last experience is significant."

Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics forecasts support Franks' concern for farmers.

While late rains allowed winter crops to be planted in Australia's wheatbelts, dry conditions have since hit harvest prospects.

In NSW, where recent rains have done little to lift hopes, lack of subsoil moisture means crops will be more vulnerable than usual to a dry summer. Victorian crops, facing what is likely to be the state's fourth-driest winter on record, have already suffered moisture stress and damage from severe frosts. The Western Australian grainbelt is under increasing pressure.

Across Australia, crop plantings this year fell by 6 per cent. Even if El Nino holds off and spring rains allow average yields, the national harvest will fall by more than 20 per cent, the bureau estimates.

Sometimes a sunburnt country is hard to love.