After rain, the paddocks lift into a fresh, lively green. Fine blades push through, and thicken, and when the wind moves across them, they ripple in a slow wave over acres of open space, allowing the whole farm to breathe again.
It is moments like these that 63-year-old farmer, Kaylene Wood, never tires of. However, that moment of green, she admits, has remained merely a memory for far too long.
“We’re looking at going into our third year of straight drought,” Kaylene said.
Across the Barwon region and adjoining areas, the drought that has shadowed Kaylene’s farm is not an anomaly—but a shared baseline. According to Barwon Water, the region has now endured three consecutive seasons of below-median rainfall, with winter soil moisture failing to recover before spring each year.
Agriculture Victoria reports that parts of the south-west region have been dry since winter 2023, forcing many farmers to rely on purchased feed rather than home-grown pasture.
In towns like Eurack, where Kaylene resides, farmers now speak of green paddocks in the past tense, not because they have vanished entirely, but because their return has become too brief and too unreliable to build a livelihood around.
Kaylene’s farm stretches across 800 acres and includes cattle, sheep and occasionally, cropping. But the soil, she says, is “dry as” beyond a mere two inches, and out of 130 of her cows, 48 are empty.
“It’s very hard to make an income to live off—off of 80-odd cows,” she said.
Last year, Kaylene and her husband 72-year-old Dan Wood spent $130,000 just keeping their stock alive.
In July 2025, the Victorian government released a $75 million drought assistance package, bringing the total aid to $144 million. The package offers up to $1,000 in household relief for eligible farming families and sets aside $25 million for water-supply and drought-resilience works through dollar-for-dollar grants.
For Kaylene, those measures miss the immediate reality.
“If you’re spending every cent you’ve got on buying fodder for your animals, you’re not going to have a spare five grand to go and throw at building a dam that’s going to stay empty.”
Kaylene does believe there are other measures that could provide some relief, such as assisting with hay transportation costs. “If they helped cover the cost of freight…that’d be terrific.”
However, the proposed emergency services and volunteers fund (ESVF), “frightened farmers even more,” she added, noting that “[when] you’ve got no way of getting money, what are you going to do when they suddenly flog another tax on you?” Kaylene expressed her disappointment, highlighting the fact that it is farmers, and their families that “go out and fight the fires and don’t get paid.”
The ESVF—which would have replaced the former fire services levy in Victoria— triggered widespread concern when initial modelling showed farmers’ bills could more than double. The Allan government announced a one-year pause in the increases for primary producers, capping their levy at the 2024-2025 level while the broader reform remains on the books as scheduled for coming years.
In Eurack—which is little more than a loose ring of farms and one lonesome town hall— the drought has had an unexpected effect. It has pushed people inward, and toward each other.
Back in 2006, during another bad year, local farmers created an informal group. Kaylene says its “where farmers could just go and have a winge about the drought.” It still meets monthly, and that ritual, Kaylene believes, has “helped a lot with mental health,” acting as an outlet for suffering farmers.
Staying hopeful through it all, she says, is more a matter of optimism. “If you don’t laugh, you’ll just end up crying,” she said. What steadies her is not the present, but the remembered sight of her paddock returning to life. The first layer of green washing across the soil, the wind lifting it into motion and the farm exhaling, as if waking from a long, deep sleep.
“I like the open space,” she said. “I love it when the farm turns from brown to green—I love it just as it starts to turn, the grass has grown, the wind blows and you look out over the paddocks, and you can see the grass rippling in the wind.”
For now, that vision remains lodged in memory, but she holds it anyway—proof that the land has come back before, and that it may again.
If this story has raised concerns for you, or someone you know, support is available.
Lifeline: 13 11 14 – lifeline.org.au
ifarmwell—Online tools for farmer wellbeing— ifarmwell.com.au
This story is part of a project exploring regional Victoria and the issues farmers are facing. See the whole collection here.
