► RELATED: Soggy sunflowers
As the Hill brothers finish up a soggy harvest in the bottom of Goran Lake near Spring Ridge, local farmer Kevin Kelly remembers history of the lake.
Mr Kelly moved to the Goran Lake area, in the 60s and said he saw it fill up for the first time in 1970.
“I've seen the lake fill up four to five times over 30 years,” Mr Kelly said.
"It filled up probably three times in the 70s and again in 2000.
“Around every 10 years or so it fills up.”
Mr Kelly said the lake was a sump and was 22,000 acres in size.
“When it fills up it holds two thirds of the water of keep dam and I’ve seen it fill up in 36 hours before,” he said.
“This amount of water that’s in it now, is only minimal compared to how it used to fill up.
“If it was summer it would dry up in a month or so but being winter it will probably stay there a while, normally it would evaporate fairly well in the summer.
“We lost 100 hectare of barley last year from the water taking too long to drain off.
“It used to fill up to the point where you didn’t bother harvesting though, crops would go under and that was it, they were gone.
“Usually you were ready to harvest, then the lake would fill up and the water was too deep to harvest – I’ve seen that on a few occasions.”
Mr Kelly said while the lake can hold a “huge” amount of water, the only outlet besides evaporation is small and to the east, which runs into the Mooki through Gunnedah.
“I think it was back in 2000 it filled up and it was a metre over top water level, and it took about three months for that metre to drain off it. It’s unbelievable.
“By the time it dries up you’ve lost that crop and then it’s generally too late to put anything else in, so you can kiss that crop goodbye too.”
Mr Kelly and his partner own approximately 1300 acres in the lake on the eastern end.
He said another danger to crops in the area is salt bands.
“If you have a bit of a cover on the ground it will hold the moisture and there’s a danger with some of that too, particularly this year because it was so hot and dry,” Mr Kelly said.
“We had sorghum up in the shallow where a bit of water had run across it, then we had hot and dry weather and the sorghum was at the stage where it wanted more moisture and put its roots down and into a salt band, which kills your crop.”
