Muttaburra graziers coping with seventh year of drought

The financial and mental reserves of Hugh and Amanda Button, along with others in the Muttaburra region up the same dry gully, are pretty much drained as they find themselves in their seventh year of drought.

The Button family, based at Crossmoor, hit the media headlines in 2015 when then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited Longreach with an $83 million drought relief package, two years after most of western Queensland had been drought declared.

At the same time, Hugh's mother Penny Button was forced to sell the family's Santa Gertrudis herd with genetics 60 years in the making.

Rather than look in the rear vision mirror, they shifted gears and changed to a trading operation, picking up small mobs of cattle whenever Mr Button's business acumen and relief falls of rain allowed.

She said the wet season just past was probably their worst.

"We might have had eight inches over a wet season but it's been in falls of 12mm, 15mm, 8mm so you don't actually get any seepage into the ground, it's all surface moisture, not deep where grass gets regerminated," she said.

The last break they had was winter 2016 when they had enough herbage to fatten what cattle they owned.

For the last five years Crossmoor has been stocked at 30 per cent of its normal carrying capacity on average.

At the same time, they've been able to access almost none of the drought relief money that's been put on the table, ironically because they had to shift to trading to survive.

Ms Button said they were deemed ineligible for assistance because they'd sold stock.

"When you look at our production numbers, you'll see we sold because of drought or we sold big mouths and bought back in little mouths.

"So a lot of funding that's available, we're excluded from."

Any thought - mostly from Ms Button - of returning the property to sheep, and diversifying their operation, is hamstrung because of the lack of a government-sponsored program for graziers not in a cluster fencing scheme.

"Had we had a fence we could go into sheep, because we've got the facilities, but we can't because the dogs are so bad that we would be losing money," she said.

"We can't take out a QRIDA loan - we are maxed in our equity because we bought the business four years ago.

"We're literally just trying to break even with banks at the moment, let alone get ahead.

"We're just constantly hamstrung, every time we try and be innovative or think outside the square, there's always blockages along the way."

Read more: State government delays drought reforms

They have been able to make use of the state government's Back to Work Regional program to receive a payment of $20,000 to hire an unemployed jobseeker in a full-time position, to put a jackaroo on.

An in-home child care program, funded by the federal government, also allows them to have a nanny for their three children while they meet the production, improvement and maintenance program on the 33,300ha property.

As Ms Button said, neither of those programs were aimed at drought support.

Both she and Mr Button have off-farm qualifications - she as a teacher and Mr Button as a carpenter - but the nearest big town to get work in, Longreach, is 90km away.

Even if it was practical to work full-time in their other trades, wages wouldn't cover the cost to run the property.

"And if Hugh and I are away working, who's looking after the kids and the property," Ms Button said.

She calls the ongoing drought western Queensland's own epidemic but says it's largely an invisible illness these days.

"We are hugely positive people. That drive to see the drought through for our children keeps us going," she said.

"We're not forgotten, we're just invisible to the government. We are literally not on their radar."

Related: Series of quality seasons needed for Darling Downs producers

Ms Button said the coronavirus pandemic should have taught Australia that its primary producers are who keep Australia going.

"I hope at the end of this, governments realise primary producers get up and go to work every day. We're the industry that keeps Australia economically stable and puts food on our tables."

As far as how the many Queensland producers like themselves still without enough grass to last them through winter can be supported, Ms Button said the best help now would be to provide money to help councils waive rates.

"Things like interest subsidies are what we need now," she said. "Things like bills that have to be paid. Some of the initiatives brought in for coronavirus would be just as helpful for us."