00:00The drought in southern Australia hasn't let Tasmania off the hook. It's in the second year
00:17of its worst drought on record. Sandra Knowles, head of the Tasmanian Farm Innovation Hub,
00:23says the stats and maps are disturbing. We watch the bomb every week and that is not
00:30lifting out of that lowest on record or you know the red, the yellow and I've never seen that before.
00:38This is one of eight drought hubs in Australia created after the Future Drought Fund was established
00:44in 2020. Their job is to drive transformational change to drought-proof farming regions.
00:53How are you doing? Nice to see you.
00:56Part of her team is Sophie Folder, the Drought Resilience Coordinator. Sophie says there's a
01:01widespread alarm that the drought has spread to the usually wet north-west.
01:06It's driest on record rainfall. Absolutely unprecedented how our weather systems are
01:13changing and those areas that would normally actually be quite wet. They'd normally be
01:17talking about how do we get water off our paddocks as opposed to how do we deal with
01:22lack of rainfall and lack of water. They're actually asking the question, is this our new normal?
01:27We've had two really failed autumns. How do we set ourselves up for the future
01:32and look at things like water security for them?
01:36We followed Sophie to Lucy and Philip Hedlum's farm at Piper's Brook in the north-east.
01:42In 30 years they've never had two successive failed autumns.
01:47They're feeling vulnerable despite an irrigation dam and a pivot irrigator.
01:52We're probably worse off this year than we were last year. Yes, it's looking green.
01:56A lot of our waterholes are probably only half full. Our irrigation dam hasn't had any real runoff yet.
02:04It might have had a little bit, but it's still half full.
02:08We haven't had huge rains in one bit, but it's just taken probably a couple of months.
02:15The Hedlums have attended several hub events. Lucy says they've been valuable, especially on
02:21containment feeding, which has helped them preserve pasture.
02:25We basically have our ewes in two mobs, which are just in sacrifice paddocks, feeding them,
02:31and they're on a ration of barley and ryegrass straw. In the meantime, resting the rest of the property
02:37to allow to get a feed bank up for lambing.
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