From drought to floods: Rawlinna station soaked in downpour

It is believed to be the biggest rainfall event in the station's 60-year history and has pushed this year's total to date to almost four times more than the whole of 2023 - in just over two months.

The downpour follows 40-90mm on Australia day, which provided parts of the Nullarbor station with a much-needed drink.

Heavens opened at 2am Saturday and had not closed when Farm Weekly spoke to Rawlinna station manager Jimmy Wood and head jillaroo Chelsea Hansford on Monday afternoon.

Over the weekend, station workers paddled out in kayaks to save homestead chickens from the rising water, which had also hit the cookhouse, workshop, spare parts room and generator shed.

Mr Wood said about 190mm had been dumped over the nightshade block, 181mm at the depot and 125mm at the homestead.

"Mother Nature is a thing of extremes and this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing," Mr Wood said.

"It probably stopped raining mid-2018 and here we are pushing towards mid-2024.

"There is that much water around - all the ridges are very soft underfoot.

"The workshop is flooded and I think the homestead will be flooded in a couple of hours.

"We have lifted whatever furniture we could to try and protect it and moved a couple of beds up into the attic.

"We will sleep up there, but I reckon we are in for a bit of a mess in a couple of hours."

After looking at weather reports, Mr Wood decided to trust the science, change sheep movements by moving them out of holding paddocks and into bigger ones.

At the homestead, water had come across the verandah and was within less than half a metre of the floorboards, which had already started to buckle due to flooding underneath.

"We have water going through the cookhouse, we will probably lose some fridges and freezers," Mr Wood said.

"There's a pretty reasonable chance we will lose power in the next couple of hours if we can't keep the water out of the generator shed.

"We are doing our best to keep going and we will just keep going as long as we can.

"This donga might take a week to go down, we will be getting pretty hungry by the end of that and will be sick of canned beans, I reckon."

Mr Wood said a further heavy downpour of 40mm had been forecast for Tuesday morning, which could cause trouble.

However, he said the good it would do for the country took the cake.

"I must say I kind of scoffed at the flood warnings when they first kept coming up on the Bureau of Meteorology website, but I certainly don't feel quite so smug now,'' he said.

"We lifted all the furniture we could, I've lifted my feet up and I'm sure the water will be flowing around them shortly.

"At the end of the day, there's nothing we could do about it, we couldn't have changed anything."

When Chelsea Hansford arrived at Rawlinna three years ago, the country was bone dry and desperate for a drink.

For the head jillaroo, the sound and sight of rainfall was a somewhat distant memory until Australia day.

And now they are seeing more than that again - only six weeks later.

"We were busting our arses on Friday before the rain because there were a couple of guys who wanted to get into town before the rain hit," Ms Hansford said.

"We were moving sheep out of holding paddocks and mustered three paddocks in one day.

"We all made it back at 7pm and then the rain came about seven hours later - it went from zero to 100 real quick."

Ms Hansford said Saturday morning's downpour lasted about eight to 10 hours, before it started drizzling.

She said while it did not stop on Sunday, it was the lightest the rain had been with even more falling on Monday.

"We are very uncertain about when it will stop,'' she said.

"It was forecasted to last about a week and then it changed, it will probably change again."

Ms Hansford said, with the rain, the condition of the sheep would improve dramatically.

She expected lambing percentages would be much higher next season.

"With this rain just after shearing, the lambs will be incredibly healthy because the ewes will fatten up and get all the feed they need before they give birth," she said.

"The ewes won't be so stressed, you will be able to see that in their wool as well because they will have access to good rainwater."