Nullarbor's Rawlinna station welcomes rain

Nestled on the Nullarbor, the station - which covers an area roughly the size of Sydney and runs 35,000 Merinos - hadn't been treated to a decent drink since 2018.

Ewes and lambs were weak, there was no feed on the western side and station manager Jimmy Wood was feeling the pinch.

However, this all changed last month, when Mother Nature fired her own shots - in the form of more than 25 millimetres of rain.

Mr Wood said one rain gauge read 33mm and some parts even looked to have recorded upwards of 50mm, with the bottom-half of Rawlinna resembling a wheat crop.

In fact, there is so much surface water, the delivery of a truckload of rams was delayed by about 10 days.

"It's a very good problem to have really - I will take this rain any day of the week," Mr Wood said.

"I was mustering today, and just to the west of the homestead and south of it there were flooded dongas (eroded gully) everywhere - that's a week-and-a-half after the rain.

"I don't know if my good feeling is shared by everyone out here, the cattle guys to the north of me are still doing it pretty tough.

"I wish there was something I could do to help them out but without shifting some clouds around, I am at a bit of a loss."

The downpour fell six weeks after 25mm in September covered the entire station and a few other places along the Nullarbor.

What Mr Wood found most interesting was it fell across Rawlinna's top end - an area that had been "very dry" for a long time.

Now there's feed almost all the way up the transline.

Mother Nature often likes to give all, much more than all or absolutely nothing, but the timing - right at the end of growing season - and what she gave could not have been better for Rawlinna.

To paint the picture, Mr Wood was forced to stop lamb marking in the middle of winter because the sheep were too "small and weak" given there was no feed on the western side for quite some time.

He believed more damage would have been done through handling, rather than leaving them unmarked with long tails.

Since September, he has already noticed a massive change in their condition.

"I was out mustering and it was incredible, the sheep would see and hear the motorbike coming and run like the wind," Mr Wood said.

"I haven't seen that at the top end of Rawlinna for about four years.

"A week later, there are dongas you can't get through on a motorbike and there are lakes of water out in the paddock."

What helped boost the impact of the rainfall was a week of cooler weather which followed.

In just a week and a half, speargrass, edible weeds and bindi-eye started growing in places it hadn't before and the weaners have been lapping it up in the bottom half of the storm.

Such native vegetation holds plenty of protein and moisture, meaning if they've had a good drink, sheep don't have to go to water points as often.

It has proven particularly helpful as - at this time of year - staff are usually working hard to pump water down pipelines, while also checking, cleaning and repairing deep bores, troughs and tanks.

"Right at the moment I don't have a need for that because, touch wood, there is no pressure on our water systems at the moment," Mr Wood said.

"There are no sheep at the troughs because there's enough moisture out in the paddocks and they are grazing in areas they wouldn't normally get to in summer.

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"It gives us so much freedom to do other jobs, mainly crutching, which we are normally under a lot of pressure for."

So how does the downpour set Rawlinna up for shearing in February and lambing?

Mr Wood said green feed would give sheep energy, which means they can better handle the shearing process.

"I wasn't looking forward to having to punish them through the woolshed, but I think they will be quite alright now."

With more condition on the ewes and rams there would be more of an interest in "meeting each other" at joining in three to four weeks' time.

"Hopefully that will ensure a good lambing," he said.

"We had a pretty lacklustre lambing last year, with only about 52pc - that was predominantly dry.

"The dry - particularly in the northern and western part of Rawlinna - really knocked those percentages about.

"In the east, where we had four reasonable years and the sheep were in very good condition, we recorded over 100pc lambing."

This, and no dog activity in the breeding flock or dog bitten lambs, was a first for quite a few years at Rawlinna.

Mr Wood put it down to 400 kilometres of exclusion fencing and a consistent wild dog program.

He said about 40pc of the fence's netting has been refurbished through varying degrees of work.

"We have got the dog fence to a state where some of it will be fine for another 20-30 years without us touching it," Mr Wood said.

"It is in good order and operating in a dog free environment is the pay-off for all the hard work we have done."