Drought

Victoria and southern New South Wales appear to be going through a bit of a drought at the moment. Being from the UK, we were used to green grass and rivers that actually flow. There's not much of that at the moment. Here is a pic from our journey between Melbourne and Sydney:

Rivers round here are somewhat pathetic at the moment. We became accustomed to driving across mighty bridges over enormous valleys, only to look down and see not much in the way of water beneath. One assumes that the rivers occasionally swell to mighty torrents but, for now, a river is identified merely by the valley that it occupies and the unusually lush vegetation in the bottom of that valley.

The drought was also evidenced by the frequent posters warning of the danger of bush fires in the area (which was high). Looking at the parched landscape, it was easy to see why this was the case.

One very interesting feature of the landscape in the farmed areas that we passed through was that every little valley had been dammed. While there was no water flowing through when we passed, each dam caused a small pool of water to accumulate, giving the livestock somewhere to get a drink. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to take a picture of any of these pools but it was nice to see the local farmers making the best of the erratic patterns of precipitation. Still, you can't help but get the impression that Australia's lack of reliable rainfall is a real problem, even in the most fertile areas.