IT has been another tough season for north Burracoppin farmer David Junk, but he expects that will be nothing compared with the battle his family faces in coming years.
David and his wife Naomi Laurie have three young boys and a comfortable house nestled on their 4500 hectare property, farming wheat and sheep.
They recently learned that their middle son, five-year-old Mitchell, has a serious neurological disorder Dispraxia - also known as clumsy child syndrome - which cannot be treated in their nearest town, Merredin.
In fact, there isn't a regional town in the State that could accommodate Mitchell's needs.
The parents believe the slow exodus of vital businesses and services from country WA had reached a critical point and is making rural communities unlivable.
Ms Laurie explained that the neurons in Mitchell's brain aren't connected to the right muscles and the muscles in his mouth can't form to make the correct sounds.
After exhausting the limited services available in the country, and a major "unnecessary" operation to insert grommets, the Junks turned to city specialists for guidance.
"There's not enough support for speech therapy in Merredin so I've been taking him to private therapy in Nedlands each week, which costs $100 a session," Ms Laurie said.
But this isn't a long-term solution from both a treatment and economical perspective, as a round trip to see the specialist is a good six-hour drive.
The family has applied to a specialist language school in Perth which typically attracts about 120 applicants and accepts only 50.
"So if we win the lottery and Mitchell gets a space then I move to Perth with the three boys and leave David home alone for one to four years," Ms Laurie said.
"If we don't get in and we stay here he probably just won't be able to keep up in class and will end up not learning to read and write properly, despite the fact that he's an intelligent little boy.
"Worst case scenario, if I spend four years in Perth with him, there's only one more year before the eldest boy goes to boarding school and he may never come back again."
Mr Junk said walking away from the farm was a last resort, and something he wasn't able to consider at this point in time, despite the bad season.
The third generation farmer runs the farm with his father and hopes to one day see his boys playing a part in the operation.
"That's if things start to turn around," Mr Junk said.
"It's pretty patchy through the area at the moment and while we've had just over 40mm rain in September, it's still not real flash."
Average rainfall on the farm is 250-300mm however only 100mm had been recorded since May.
"We had good moisture going into seeding but then it just didn't rain," Mr Junk said.
"The long-term average in June is 40mm but this June we only got 4mm.
"Some of the crop on our heavy country took two months before coming out of the ground."
While the challenges continue to stack up, both Mr Junk and Ms Laurie remain committed to both the farm and their sons.
But they are still after answers from the government, health and education departments as to why country towns are under-funded and ill equipped.
"It's like we've been forgotten," Ms Laurie said.
"I grew up on a farm in the Eastern States and it's nowhere near as bad as this.
"If you had a town three hours out from a capital city over there, you'd have a population of 60,000 people and all the services you need you wouldn't need to be relocating."
When interviewed at the Merredin Research Station field day last week, Department of Agriculture and Food director general Rob Delane said access to better services was something that was being closely looked at by government and industry.
"There are a lot of services that aren't here but we need to be able to know where to go to access these as well as information," he said.
"In the past the problem was as much a drought of services as it was an actual drought.
"We need to figure out a way to change this and bridge that gap."
