Season a rollercoaster ride in Salmon Gums

At the start of last cropping season, Salmon Gums farmer Shane Hanson was simply hoping for a normal year.

However, 2011 proved to be anything but normal.

After a late start, hopes for average crop yields dried up as quickly as the red Salmon Gums soil, as cloud after cloud passed by without rain.

"For the whole year we had 280mm but most of that was in one to 5mm showers," Shane said. "That doesn't do anything. The biggest rainfall event we had was 11mm and that was in July."

By October wheat in the family's 1500-hectare program was virtually dead and Shane had conceded at least half of their crops wouldn't be worth harvesting.

Then the heavens opened, dumping 48mm for October, making it 2011's wettest month for the Hansons.

"In October it just seemed to rain, constant rain," Shane said.

"(The wheat) was all nearly dead and I thought it was going to wreck it totally and then it all came back green."

The almost dead plants sent up new heads and as October, November and December progressed, instead of harvesting Shane was looking out across green wheat paddocks.

Headers didn't grace the Hanson's paddock until just a couple of days before Christmas.

"I've never seen wheat come back like that before," Shane said.

"We'd written off about half the program, but now we're probably going to harvest the lot.

"In October I thought we'd be flat out trying to get seed back, now I've got nearly all the seed back and we've actually delivered a few loads to the bin now."

But the showers were a mixed blessing.

"Before the rain we knew we weren't going to get a lot, but we thought we'd have at least decent quality but we haven't got that," Shane said.

"Falling numbers are 200 to 250, I've got a lot of white mould.

"We just can't believe we've got low falling numbers, mould and germ end staining when we've only had 36mm since the crop has ripened."

Shane estimates most of the program will yield about 300kg - still disappointing but better than what the family was expecting before the rain.

But the rain has done little to solve the ongoing water shortage experienced by most of the farmers with stock around Salmon Gums. Shane has been carting water daily for 18 months, and before that was making two or three trips a week.

It's a situation the young farmer described as demoralising.

"Up until we got the rain in October I was carting 10,000 litres every day and every other day I would cart 20,000 litres," Shane said.

"If you got in there and there was a line up, it used to take me two or three hours. It got to the point where it took me all day just to cart water.

"I had 52mm of rainfall in one event at the other end of the farm and I've got water out there, but only in three dams and there's not a lot of it.

"As I'm slowly doing harvest I'm bringing sheep home to put on the stubbles but as soon as I put them on the stubbles I've got to keep carting water for them."

The rains might have finally arrived, but the dark clouds and thunderstorms now rolling in aren't exactly welcome.

With 26mm in the last week, harvest has ground to halt.

Shane is hoping for some fine weather to finish off harvest before preparing for the next roll of the dice.

Once again, he's praying for a normal season.