Australian Farmers Told to Leave Dry South
    By Nick Squires
    The Telegraph UK

    Monday 26 March 2007

    Humpty Doo - Severe droughts and global warming are forcing Australia to consider opening up one of the world's last untouched agricultural frontiers.

    Farmers in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia face ruin as the once mighty Murray and Darling rivers are slowly being bled dry by thirsty crops and historically low rainfall.

    The tropical north, in contrast, promises torrential downpours. So, in an echo of the country's 19th-century pioneering spirit, a government task force is now studying the prospect of encouraging farmers to abandon the dry-as-dust south. "I've got dairy farmers in Victoria asking, 'When can we go?' It's a case of, 'Go north, young man,' " said Senator Bill Heffernan, who is chairing the 8 million study.

    But history carries some sober warnings. A few miles from the Northern Territory town of Humpty Doo, an ambitious agricultural enterprise was begun in the 1950s.

    It proved a disaster and was abandoned within a decade after magpie geese ate the rice seed, buffalo bulldozed the paddies and seasonal rains proved erratic.

    "The general feeling up here is that southerners don't have a clue what they'd be letting themselves in for," said Jemma Walshe, a researcher at Charles Darwin University.