PATTERNS OF DROUGHT

Cattle tracks and dried-up dams leave scars in drought-affected paddocks on May McKeown’s property of ‘Long View’, located near the town of Come By Chance, in north-western New South Wales, Australia, in October of 2019. 80-year-old May has lived alone on her 6000 acre (2400 hectare) property of 'Long View', located around 700 kilometres north-west of Sydney, for most of the last 15 years. Her family has been farming in the northwest corner of New South Wales state since the late 19th century. May inspects the property daily, carrying bales of hay to hand-feed her cattle, and constantly wonders when the current devastating drought affecting the flat north-west plains will end, adding that the last 'decent' rain the property received was nearly a decade ago - in 2010. These photographs, all taken using a drone, were the result of an assignment on the long-running drought in the north-western region of the state of New South Wales, and show the patterns of a landscape brutally affected by the harshness of drought.