Santa showers gifts on grateful farmersIT WAS already raining when Brooklyn, the youngest of the McInerney children, slid out of bed to see what Santa had left for her beneath the Christmas tree.
As the 11-year old shredded the wrapping paper to reveal an ''I Like it Loud'' T-shirt and two tickets to Taylor Swift at the Newcastle Entertainment Centre, the stripped red earth surrounding Belvedere - a cattle station 30 kilometres north-west of Bourke - was receiving its own gift: a proper drenching.
''It's amazing,'' said Brooklyn's father, Brett McInerney, who runs sheep and 1200 head of cattle on the 65,000-hectare property. ''I had a white Christmas in Canada once, but I've never had a wet Christmas.''While snowflakes look good on greeting cards, it is obvious that rain - precious, overdue rain - means far more to 48-year-old Mr McInerney. The flat lands around Bourke have been in the grip of drought for almost 10 years and the family has been through tough times as a result.
When the big dry was at its most severe in 2002 and 2003, Mr McInerney's days were spent bulldozing mulga trees for feed and pulling stricken animals out of bogged dams. Some survived to repeat the trick, others had to be shot.
As the weather tightened its noose and the number of cattle dwindled to fewer than 200, he took a 50 per cent pay cut to stay on the land. His wife, Jodie, noticed he was making rather too many visits to his computer looking for weather systems that often never materialised or petered out too soon.
''We've had a lot of false hope and that takes a toll mentally,'' he said. ''The kids used to think three or four mil was a good rain, and Brooklyn still doesn't know what it's like to have a year when there's an abundance of feed for the animals. But if we get good rain now we'll go into winter feeling really good.''
And this Christmas rain is the good stuff. When a sudden deluge hits parched earth the result is often flash flooding. But the rain running in rivulets down the 12 kilometres of dirt road that connects Belvedere to the Bourke bitumen was steady; a soaking, benevolent rain.
If the Bureau of Meteorology is right - and Mr McInerney prays it is - up to 300 millimetres of rain may fall on inland NSW in the next few days, the low-pressure legacy of Cyclone Laurence. ''At the moment it's coming straight down and the weather system is supposed to stall over us,'' Mr McInerney said. ''But you never really count it until it's in the rain gauge.''
Even so, a rainy Christmas is an easy Christmas, for this farmer at least. The sheep don't have to come to the dams and Mr McInerney doesn't have to check the water levels. He feels relaxed and says that feeling has spread to his family in the living room carpeted with discarded wrapping paper.
''We stop when it rains,'' said Jodie. ''We make a cup of tea, sit on the swing and watch it.''
If there was one downside to the rain for Brooklyn and her teenage brothers, Dalton, Harrison and Jackson, it was the toll it took on their prize-winning nativity scene. They recently scooped the $200 first prize for the district's best Christmas postbox decorations, but the unexpected downpour had left Santa and the baby Jesus looking decidedly limp.
''A rainy day or Christmas Day are the only times we stop out here,'' Mrs McInerney said. ''So to have a rainy Christmas Day is just fantastic.''More:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/santa-showers-gifts-on-grateful-farmers-20091225-lezu.html?autostart=1Hope you and yours have as fine a Christmas as the McInerney's have had!
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