Bruce Patton sees a lot of desperate people in his job but what this family did when he turned up even surprised him.
A mother and her four children have their arms full of containers. Mr Patton is used to filling up massive water tanks with his 28,500 litre load so containers aren’t going to cut it. But then he finds out this family is so desperate for every last drop of water, there’s a reason they’ve brought the containers out.
When Mr Patton pulls the hose from the tank, litres are wasted when what’s left in the hose drains out.“They were treating it like it was liquid gold,” Mr Patton tells news.com.au.Swatting off flies in the dry heat, he explains it costs $4000 to feed the sheep. He only makes $3000 carting water.The area has been in drought for three years, the worst anyone has ever seen. Mr Patton gets work from Rural Aid which supports farmers in dire need – and there are a lot of them. He carts two loads a day, seven days a week. “The last 12 months have been the worst,” he says. “It’s gradually getting worse and worse. It’s terrible. It’s the worst I’ve had in 40 years because it’s going into a third year. “It’s just dragged on for so long. It’s having a mental effect on people, they just sort of give up after a while.” This time Mr Patton is taking a load to Peter and Nola Page. The couple have never had to ask for water and they’ve had their property since 1985.People who deposit their bottles and cans at return and earn stations are able to donate the 10c to the bush. TOMRA set a goal for $250,000 and were able to raise that in 12 weeks. Now they’re going for $500,000.“We were thinking it’s going to rain but it hasn’t and so we can’t afford to wait,” Mrs Page says. “This will mean a lot. You can stay in the shower a bit longer. Instead of washing once a week you can do two loads.”Mrs Page says they wear the same clothes for two to three days before washing them.The couple mostly keep the water they have for the sheep. They’re also running low on grain to keep them fed.Mr Page says the water is a “lifesaver”.Craig Marsh from Rural Aid tells a story of a man he came across when they were handing out hay – the organisation also provides cash cards for farmers to spend on what they like.“He was driving his daughter to school every day and every day her shoes would come apart,” he says. “He was taping them up with black electrical tape. So he said to me, ‘Today I’m going straight out to buy my daughter a pair of shoes’.”“I’m optimistic things are going to change over the next few months,” he says.
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