WHILE the skies might be gloomy, the outlook couldn’t be brighter for the Thornhill family of 12 Mile Station after they received much welcome rain this past week.
The property, near Basalt about 180km north-west of Charters Towers is awash after it was pummeled during heavy storms in the last week of February.
And the weather gods are still smiling on the region, with showers continuing this week.
Lucy and Drew Thornhill have managed the property for about 12 months.
They run about 5,000 head of brahman cross on the 42,000 hectare property and following the recent rainfall, are hoping to restock.
Mrs Thornhill said it was still pouring on Friday, following on from their heaviest shower of 95mm recorded on February 28.
“It had been on and off for the week before that but we finally got the big one of 95mm,” she said.
”It was getting tense, we were getting a bit stressed and anxious, but now the rain has come this has been a huge blessing.”
The property recorded 400mm in February and had received another 137mm until March 5.
They have received 519mm for the year so far, in comparison to 750mm for the whole of 2017.
“We’ve never seen these rivers run and the neighbours say they haven’t seen it like this for five or six years,” Mrs Thornhill said.
“We’re very excited and we’re finding dams where we have not seen dams.
“The land is lush and it’s green.
“We’ve got lick in the shed here, but we’re hoping it will be able to sit there for another year or so.
“It probably means we can run some more cattle instead of trying to destock, we will be able to run a few more now that we’ve got the feed.”
Mrs Thornhill said the nature of their work would shift following the wet.
“It changes things, we won’t be going out two or three times a day checking water and starting pumps because the dams are full again.
”Obviously we can’t do too much mustering with the creeks and things up, so we’ll be managing the paddocks.
“It will be a good couple of months of hard labour checking all the fences and the river flood gates, but after that it’s looking promising for the end of the year.
And it’s not only the cattle loving the rain.
Their children, Sierra, 5 and Miranda, 2, have enjoyed their first taste of the wet season.
“Every morning we have the muddy puddles jumping competition, we got an old Esky lid out the other day and their dad was teaching them how to skim board.
“They haven’t seen flood water before in their lives so it’s quite exciting.”
