AS PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke of drought near Trangie, a semi trailer of oaten hay from Victoria rolled up the track at Pine Villa Red Angus stud at Yeoval.
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John and Joy Haycock watched its arrival, grateful they could manage to buy it at all.
They brought in 80 big square bales of good quality oaten hay by road train to Parkes then the driver had to shuffle trailers back and forth because road trains can’t travel to Yeoval.
The hay had been destined for export, but increasingly less Australian fodder is making port, with irrigated growers from the south selling their wares into NSW.
“There’s no grain left in NSW,” says Mr Haycock.
“In 1982 we could go to the wheat board and buy it and claim half of it back, it really helped.”
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The load of hay cost the Haycocks thousands of dollars to transport, but he had to travel to Victoria to source it.
He ordered it a month ago and it arrived on Monday.
Truckloads of hay are pouring out of the south.
Driving the 50 kilometres between Bairnsdale and Stratford, Gippsland, Victoria, late last month, stock and station agent David Walker counted 17 trucks headed north.
The drought situation in NSW has not arrived fast.
Mr Haycock reckons the rain ended in November 2016, a season they came out of with 1600 round bales of hay and 400 tonnes of grain stored on farm.
“That went last year,” said Mr Haycock, “there’s only so much hay you can make, because when you cut you leave your paddocks bare.”
And that’s where the situation became dire for the Haycocks.
With many bare paddocks on their 730-hectare farm the rain stopped.
“We had 15 millimetres in March and another 10mm in May and we sowed permanent pasture on that 10mm.
“It came up but most of it died.”
Mr Haycock can’t understand why the PM, Deputy PM Michael McCormack and Agriculture Minister David Littleproud organised the event at Trangie if they had nothing to announce.
“On Sunday night we had hope, now we know they’re going to do nothing, when you take hope away people get desperate, they’d have been better off not coming.”
My Haycock said Mr Turnbull’s declaration he would put pressure on the state government didn’t hold much ground with him.
“I’ve voted Nationals all my life at state level, never again.
“We’ll fix them at the next election.
“They’re treating farmers worse than they did greyhound trainers, so there’s a great opportunity for the Labor Party here.
“Low interest loans get paid back, so they can’t say they’ve actually given you anything,” he said.
“If it’s a flood or a fire you get assistance, if it’s a drought and it wipes you out you get nothing.”
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He said he had advice from a state government advisor who had been on the job three weeks.
“He came and told us how to live our lives, treating us like we were whingers.
“He looked around the farm and said ‘sell your machinery, you’ve still got plenty of money’.”
“People had hope today, the PM was going to speak, that’s gone now.”
