Travelling along the Flinders Highway in north-western Queensland, dry, dusty paddocks sit side-by-side with flourishing green pastures, the contradiction of La Niña played out along fence lines.
In parts, the bare, barren land resembles a desert. In others, it was a luscious vista grass and trees where cattle could happily eat their fill.
La Niña is typically associated with wetter than average conditions for northern and eastern Australia, particularly in winter, spring and early summer.
In the north-west, La Niña has been hit-and-miss, a scene Steve Hadley, a Senior Meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said was common in the north.
"Northern Australia has had quite a variable rainfall pattern throughout the year," he said.
"It is often a patchwork of rainfall where you get these smaller rainfall cells and then you'll get the odd, bigger, larger systems.
"[They] sweep through and produce a heavier rainfall across a broader swath of the north but maybe missing other places entirely."
Where did La Niña go?
After consecutive years of disappointing wet seasons, many graziers have been left wondering what happened to La Niña.
Among them is Ruth Chaplain of Wynberg Station, 30 kilometres outside of Cloncurry, who is still waiting for the big wet to arrive.
"It definitely hasn't been a strong start by any stretch," she said.
"It's very hit and miss. Some people have had decent rain, but a large majority haven't."
It was the tough reality for many that a La Niña season was no guarantee rain would land on your paddock.
"With a La Niña year, we see that rainfall in many areas tends to be higher than average," Mr Hadley said.
"But we still need those specific weather systems and storm cells, which happen on a much smaller scale, to actually deliver that rainfall into these areas."
Hit and miss
At Werrina Station, north of Julia Creek, Thea Harrington said the rainfall was so variable you could see different totals not just across properties but across paddocks.
"We have two gauges, one at our house and one five kilometres down the road at the bottom of our driveway. In those you can have two vastly different falls," she said.
Mr Hadley said sporadic rainfall was a common feature of thunderstorms that develop in northern Australia, where the landscape could change as quickly as the weather rolled in.
"The thunderstorm systems that come through North Queensland can affect one part of the region but not another," he said.
Grazier Jay Hughes of Cannum Downs near Richmond received 123 millimetres in a single rainfall event in November.
It was both unexpected and unprecedented for that time of year.
"We've had a pretty dry sort of a spell here. We've only had about 60 odd millimetres since June," he said.
"It has been hit and miss over the last few years. You hear of big falls in little areas, not general rain."
For this country, it was the kind of downpour that can change everything, with shoots of young, short grass — known as "green pick" — the first to emerge after the rain.
"The country had a little bit of pick in it, but there wasn't enough rain in it to keep it going, now this rain will really kick it along," Mr Hughes said.
Floods in the south, drought in the north
As floods ripped through and devastated farmland across New South Wales and Victoria, more than 40 per cent of Queensland remained drought declared, a climate situation North West graziers struggled to reconcile
"It's really hard to fathom, and it's a real period of instability and unpredictability," Ms Harrington said.
As they battle through drought, hoping for more rain, they are acutely aware of the devastation being experienced in the south.
"It'd be nice to take some of the wet off the people down south but unfortunately we just can't do that," Ms Chaplain said.
But meteorologist Steve Hadley said there was still hope for the North West.
"Things could change on a dime in some parts of the North West region," he said.
"There's still potential for us to see increased rainfall over the next few months in north-west Queensland."
