Most farmers welcome rain — except at harvest — but for the salt industry it's more curse than blessing.
Aside from leading to a shortage of seasoning, rain on the salt plains can also spell trouble for pool owners.
Earlier this year, there was a shortage of salt for pools on the east coast due to significant rain events, particularly in New South Wales.
And further heavy rainfall this summer could drive up the demand for salt to sanitise pools, as salty pool water is diluted and lost through overflows.
So why is rain an issue?
The country's northernmost saltworks, located in the food bowl of Bowen, has existed for almost a century.
The current owner, Australian Saltworks, has run it for seven years.
Director Michael McNamara said this year was one of the wettest he had seen.
"[Rain's] the enemy for a salt producer, and in an average year we make average amounts of salt, but when it's wet, we make less," he said.
"This year it's been a fair bit wetter than average.
"That will reduce our salt production and our harvest, possibly by about 30 or 40 per cent this year."
In an average year Australian Saltworks would be harvesting 20,000 tonnes at the site, but this year the volume will be nowhere near that.
Mr McNamara said the season was usually well timed to dodge the wet weather.
"Our annual cycle starts with salt production after the wet season [and] we deposit salt through the course of the dry part of the year," he said.
"And before the wet season, we jump in and we get that salt, we harvest it and get it into a stack where it's safe from the rains during the wet season."
From salt fields to swimming pools and stockfeed
About 75 per cent of the the salt produced at the Australian Saltworks Bowen site goes into feed for livestock, while the second biggest portion of their product goes into pools.
Mr McNamara said while the rain made producing salt harder, it had a positive impact on demand from the pool industry.
"At this time of the year, when it starts to get wetter, people tend to buy more salt to put into their swimming pools," Mr McNamara said.
He said the process of getting the salt from the field to the pool was fascinating.
"The salt field uses seawater as an input, so you've got salt in the seawater," Mr McNamara said.
The salt field has a series of evaporation ponds that the water moves through, with the concentration increasing in each as more water evaporates.
"Eventually after a period of time that salt is ready to come out of solution and we deposit it into our crystallisers, which are constructed ponds," Mr McNamara said.
"And that's what we harvest each year."
The harvested wet product is processed and finished as a dry product, which is then crushed more finely and packaged before it hits the market.
Pool owners feeling less of the pinch
Glen Selby, who supervises the pool counter at Dowdens pumping and water treatment in Mackay, agreed salt seemed to be in short supply.
"I know other pool shops are sending [customers] here so there must be a shortage for that to happen," Mr Selby said.
But he said he was currently well-stocked.
However, Mr Selby said a lot of rain in the new year could wash the salt out of pools and drive up demand once again.
"You never know what's going to happen around the corner, if we get a cyclone or something like that where we get absolutely gallons of water dumped on this area," he said
"But at this point, without inclement weather or a cyclone or something, we should be OK to get through the next couple of months."
