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Nick Squires

The world's largest cattle station has been forced to sell off its livestock and mothball its operations because of the severe drought gripping central Australia.
Anna Creek Station, which is bigger than Israel, encompasses 24,000  sq km of scrub, sand dunes and savannah in the Outback of South  Australia.
It is normally capable of supporting 16,000 cattle but the 'Big Dry' - the worst drought in a century - is now so severe that the land has been stripped of grass and the herd has been whittled down to less than 2,000.
Half the cattle were sold for slaughter, while the other half were moved to other properties owned by giant pastoral company S Kidman and Co. Over the next few months the numbers are expected to dwindle even further.
Anna Creek's normal staff of around 20 men and women has been reduced to a skeleton operation of half a dozen.
In the century since it was established, the huge ranch has been cleared of cattle only twice before.
'The drought is very severe. Before the weekend, when there were a few millimetres of rain, Anna Creek hadn't had rain since December,' said Greg Campbell,  managing director of S Kidman and Co, which was founded by cattle baron Sir Sidney Kidman  in 1899.
'Since the European settlement of this part of Australia, we've only experienced these conditions twice before. We've had four years of below average rainfall, and last year and the first six months of this year have been particularly savage.'
The extreme lack of rain has killed off some of the Outback's hardiest tree species and is even threatening the survival of mulga and bluebush, tough shrubs which cattle can rely on in all but the worst dry spells.
The drought was part of a cyclical pattern rather than evidence of climate change, Mr Campbell said. 'Although if this dry period continues, it might start to look more like climate change,' he said.
Anna Creek is in one of the driest regions of the driest inhabited continent in the world.
Trying to raise thousands of high-quality beef cattle for export to Japan and the United States might seem like madness.
But when the rains do come, the land springs to life, with the arid plains and sandhills carpeted in swaying grass and wild flowers.
'I've seen people standing thigh deep in clover,' said Terry Omond, Kidman's human resources manager. 'It's the type of country that responds dramatically to rainfall.
'You only need a few inches, and you're laughing. It can get rain from the winter cold fronts coming up from the south, or from the tropical storms way up north. But it can miss out on both.'
Big Dry
Severe drought affects some parts of Australia about once every: 18 years



Drought Down Under cripples world's biggest cattle station