Hunter farmers are "tearing up cash" in an effort to offload cattle in the face of worsening drought conditions.
Sale yards are becoming pits of despair as thousands of stock are sold at rock bottom prices by owners desperate to cut their losses.
"It's dire straits. You've got quite a lot of people that bought cattle last year who are tearing up $500 to $1,000 pretty quickly at the moment," Scone Saleyards and Equine Facility coodinator Brett Peel said.
Twenty per cent of the Hunter is now in drought, while the remainder is drought affected. It follows one of the driest winters on record.
In an unprecedented move, the not-for-profit Aussie Hay Runners recently sent a convoy of 34 trucks with hay donations from Victoria and Southern NSW to supplement dwindling feed stock in the Upper Hunter.
And the situation is set to worsen with the Bureau of Meteorology warning that an emerging El Nino climate pattern will result in a scorching summer.
"I think a lot of people have got themselves into a situation where they have had to accept that nothing has changed and it [the drought] is probably going to get worse," Mr Peel said.
"They have been hanging onto their cattle but prices have started dropping. They don't want to sell at that price, who would? Then you get into a situation where it's do or die."
Over the past few years farmers have been receiving about $9 a kilo for lamb. But the glut of livestock hitting the market has pushed prices down to between $3 to $4 a kilogram.
There have also been reports of some farmers offering their sheep for free to whoever will take them.
"It's just the hard hand that the farmer gets dealt. Do you ride it out or do you get out?," Mr Peel said.
"On the other side, some guys will take the risk and buy what they can when it is so cheap and ride it out and make money at the other end. It's like betting on a horse race."
Eighty-nine-year-old Murrurundi farmer Brian Hunt has seen more droughts come and go than he cares to remember.
Even he is surprised at how quickly the emerging drought is taking hold.
"I wasn't expecting it to come on so soon," he said.
"I was reading something the other day about droughts around the turn of last century, apparently they used to follow in quick succession so it's happened before."
Unlike previous droughts he had seen, Mr Hunt said he had noticed that most properties still had a covering of dry feed.
"In most droughts you look around and there's just red dirt or a patch of black soil with nothing on top of it," he said.
After unloading all his cattle during the last drought, he now runs 600 sheep on his 1000 hectare property.
He doesn't know if they will make it through the coming months and years.
"It's a very good question, I don't know," he said.
"A lot of them are lambing at the present time but we are having a hell of a time with dingoes."
While bone dry paddocks and plummeting cattle prices are the visual focus, the associated mental strain takes an even greater toll.
"There's no doubt about it, the worry of what you are going to do gets you down," Mr Hunt said.
Upper Hunter MP Dave Layzell said conversations about mental health were becoming common throughout the electorate.
"The further you go out west there's a lot of older generations who are like 'we just don't have the mental strength to feed cattle again' and a lot of them are getting out," he said.
While urban centres have, to date, been largely untouched by the rapidly deteriorating conditions, Mr Layzell said governments needed to pay greater attention to the plight of rural communities.
"We really need to acknowledge what's happening with the people on the ground," Mr Layzell said.
"When I'm at the cattle sales and stock is getting let go at horrendous prices people are saying to me that they want to know that the government can hear their concerns."
There is also a need for greater clarity about the government's overall drought plan.
"Everyone's got their individual drought plans, but how do we support an industry going forward?," Mr Layzell said.
"What is the plan if we are still in this predicament in the new year? At the moment we haven't heard a lot."
It was a sentiment recently echoed by Upper Hunter Shire mayor Maurice Collison.
"The government really needs to get up here," he told the Newcastle Herald.
"The water is going to disappear, the feed is disappearing and the cattle markets are disgraceful. We need the pollies to get out of the city and take a look around."
As part of the state's mental health budget, $18.2 million has been allocated over the 4 years for 27 full time equivalent farmgate counsellors and drought peer support workers who will provide outreach and coordination with local services and communities.
The government also announced a $170 million Drought Stimulus Package as part of the recent state budget.
The package includes support for infrastructure, critical town water projects, local drought support packages, stimulus initiatives and country show sponsorships.
The Bureau of Meteorology national data issued this month shows that September rainfall was 70.8 per cent below the 1961-1990 average, the driest September since records began in 1900.
Rainfall in September was below average for most of the southern two thirds of the country.
Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and the Central Coast and parts of the Upper Hunter were officially drought declared earlier this month.
The bureau's most recent climate outlook issued last week predicted below-median rainfall was likely for much of western, northern and southern Australia between November and January.
It also said maximum temperatures were at least twice as likely to be unusually warm across the country.
The region's water storages have been sliding for the past few months and, with no rain on the horizon, they will continue to deteriorate.
Glennies Creek dam was at 93 per cent this week and Glenbawn was at 96 per cent.
In the Lower Hunter, overall storage levels stood at 85 per cent, down 3.8 per cent from a month ago and 14.8 per cent from 12 months ago.
But they are still a long way off from the low point of 52.7 per cent that was reached in early 2020.
NSW Minister for Agriculture Tara Moriarty recently met with researchers at the NSW Department of Primary Industries Tamworth Agricultural Institute to discuss how their research was driving drought preparedness.
"Farmers across NSW are a resilient bunch, and the NSW Government is committed to supporting them to prepare for drought through agricultural research that helps farmers build on-ground resilience," she said.
She said most farmers were already implementing supplementary feeding and considering options to prepare for the forecasted drought.
"This month's NSW DPI State Seasonal Update is telling us that drought conditions are continuing to emerge in the north, north-east and south-east regions of the state," Ms Moriarty said.
"Now is the time for many farmers to consider things like stocking levels, whether they're prepared to feed livestock, to what extent and for how long."
