“It is bad believe me, worse than many people realise,” he said. “We’ve had a bit of a green drought with that bit of rain we had in June, and even in paddocks that look green there is no feed. But water is the problem.

“We can buy feed in and maintain things but there is just no water.

“We’re having to shift cattle and put in water troughs in paddocks where they were never needed. I’ve seen dry water holes that I have never seen before.

“I’m worried about what is going to happen when the heat hits the paddocks and we’ve had no rain and no irrigation. We have no food stored and no green feed.”

Mr Ubrihien said paddocks had been overgrazed because of the drought and with no cover were drying out faster with recent frosts contributing to the problem.

“The problem is the lack of water in this district. We are on zero irrigation from Brogo Dam and the Brogo River. Water is for stock and domestic purposes only.

“People don’t realise how serious it is. We rely on rain in June, July and August to prime up for spring.

“But we’ve had only 1.5mm here in July and there’s no prospect of rain at present.”

Mr Ubrihien said that while 1968 was often spoken of as a bad year, the present situation was worse.

“There’s less surface water here now by far. We are driving over bog holes where you could never go before and not even leaving wheel marks.

“I’ve never seen it drier in my life time,” said Mr Ubrihien, who has lived on the family farm, Corridgeree, for 65 years.

“The springs and soaks are drying up and I can now only get enough water coming in to pump every second day from a well that was usually overflowing. And that’s in the wettest gully in Tarraganda.”

Mr Ubrihien said that Corridgeree’s 365 acres - “one for every day of the year” - on the Brogo River was one of the best watered farms in the district. Three of its five lagoons were now dry.

“We are absolutely desperate for rain this month and in September,” he said. We can’t do anything without water.

“It is unbelievable to go this long and be so dry. Bega is not beautiful in the dry.”

Mr Ubrihien said that while his family were milking 200 head, neighbours had 600 and 1000 cow dairies and he did not know how they were managing to keep people employed.

Mr Ubrihien said the price paid for milk was down to 40 cents a litre from above 50 cents.

“So 20 per cent of our income has gone before you start. All other costs are going up - insurance, power, fuel and feed.”

But he said farmers were lucky to have the Bega Co-op. In Victoria milk prices were down to 28 cents a litre, which was well below the cost of production.

Mr Ubrihien said that putting in some fence posts recently he found that he was bringing up dust after digging down six inches.

“We are going to be in strife until we get the sub-soil moisture back with good soaking rain,” he said.

“We need consistent rain over many months to do that.”

Bega Farm Supplies proprietor Peter Abramowski said in a letter to the News Weekly last month that average rainfall had dropped alarmingly over the past 14 years.

Average annual rainfall of 536mm over that period was 50 per cent less than for the 50 years from 1945 to 1995.

Farm dams were disappearing and the situation was now as bad as in 2002.

Bega Cheese farm services manager Ken Garner said that the area had basically been in drought for the 10 years he had been here.

He said that 2002 had been a bad year with no spring rain and a hot, dry summer.

“But this is as tough as it has been. It’s very hard,” he said.

“I sympathise with the guys out there trying to produce milk.”

Mr Garner said the next few weeks would be critical going into spring with no moisture to get pastures moving.

There had been no impact on milk supplies to the cooperative yet but he anticipated there would be over the spring months and summer unless good rain arrived.

He said the Brogo Dam had never been so low for so long since it was built, Cochrane’s was also very low with no inflows over winter to either dam.

Bureau of Meteorology said that for the 24-month period from July 2007 to June 2009 there had been serious to severe rainfall deficiencies across much of southeast Australia.

“A few very isolated areas of serious to severe deficiencies were also evident across the far southeast of NSW,” in the first six months of this year, the bureau said.

“Very long term rainfall deficiencies outside of the usual drought periods persist across parts of southern and eastern Australia,’ the bureau said.

“Most notably, rainfall has been below average across much of southwest and southeast Australia since 1997.”