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\"I find droughts a little bit like cancer -- it sort of eats away at you, and it just gets drier and drier and more severe and more severe, and impacting on your life a lot worse. I do try really hard to keep the house and the garden clean and green because that keeps your head in the right space at night time.\"

\"PHOTO:
David Gray/Reuters
PHOTO: Farmer Ash Whitney stands in the middle of a dried-up dam in a drought-effected paddock on his property located west of the town of Gunnedah in New South Wales, Australia, June 3, 2018.
>

May McKeown, 79, and her son Jimmie live on a property near the northwest NSW town of Walgett, and say they are extremely worried about the future having had almost no rain since 2010.

\"My great-grandfather settled on this land in 1901, and he never had to remove cattle from the paddocks over there,\" she says pointing to the west. \"But we have had to remove them all and bring them closer to the homestead so we can more easily feed them.\"

The farm has made little income in recent years and when they run out of hay in a few months, rising hay prices will leave them in a financial situation her family has never had to contend with in more than a 100 years, she says.

A quarter of Australia's agricultural production by value is grown in NSW and the state government has offered more than $1 billion in emergency funding to farmers. It announced the latest tranche -- $500 million -- on July 30.

\"PHOTO:
David Gray/Reuters
PHOTO: Sheeps eat grain dropped in a drought-effected paddock on a property located on the outskirts of Tamworth, in New South Wales, Australia, June 2, 2018.
>

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology says parts of Australia experienced the second-warmest summer (December-February) on record and have just been through one of the driest and warmest autumns (March-May) on record.

And the dry spell, which has left more than 95 percent of NSW in drought, according to Department of Primary Industries, has no end in sight.

Story and Photography by David Gray

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