October is usually the busiest month for Jamie Janke, who is no stranger to an overnight shift driving a header.
This year, however, he and his machines have been parked at his Emerald, central Queensland, home listening to rain on the roof.
With most of eastern Australia experiencing seemingly endless storms, he's been hard-pressed to find a crop that's not under water or in impassable mud.
For contract harvesters like Mr Janke, any stop to the winter harvest meant a halt to their main source of income.
"Historically, we're wanting to be finished in central Queensland by now and heading down south towards Moree," he said.
"But at this stage, we don't even know what's going to happen there with floodwaters.
"We're looking at losing quite a significant amount of work."
'Most expensive crop ever grown'
Around her Dalby home on Queensland's Darling Downs, agronomist Millie Bach has been watching the wheat crops turn from green to gold.
She said the money that had been poured into getting them to this stage was unbelievable.
"It would be up there with the most expensive crop ever grown," she said.
"The expenses are all a lot higher than normal — fertiliser has doubled in cost from where it was 12 months ago.
"The same goes for labour, chemical, diesel and seed prices. It's trending up all across the board."
The need for farmers to get their crops harvested at the good-quality high-yield point was incredibly important if they wanted a profit, she said.
'Boat or tractor'
This need is all too real for Sam Heagney, who has been left to wonder whether his crops, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, will ever generate a return.
Just getting out into the paddock to check them was difficult.
"If we want to get around it's either by boat or tractor," he said.
But he had seen enough to know that at least half of his year's work was under water.
"This was going to be the best wheat crop we've ever grown," he said.
"It's been a battle to grow, it's been expensive to grow, and now at the eleventh hour it's been potentially taken away."
'Worse than a drought'
Mary O'Brien, the founder of rural mental health service Are You Bogged Mate? says she's already had farmers contact her about this anxiety-inducing season.
"It's horrible. It's just heartbreaking," she said.
"I think this is worse than a drought because in the drought [farmers] didn't plant anything.
"This year they spent all this time and money and energy to finally put a crop in after so long, then to watch it just be washed away. It's watching money go down the drain.
"Now is the time to make that phone call [to us] you've been meaning to make."
Mr Janke agreed, saying there had never been a more important time to check in on the neighbour.
"That whole concept of Are You Bogged Mate? is very literal this year," Mr Janke said.
"There will be a lot of people losing a lot of money."
The Bureau of Meteorology had a sombre warning for those waiting for sun and dryer days, forecasting more rain next week.
"On Sunday we'll see another trough heading into south-west Queensland," said Kimber Wong, a meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology.
"That system is expected to move eastward in the early days of next week and will be a mix of showers, thunderstorms, and rain areas."
