The Year of the Farmer, by Rosalie Ham

Drought has put everyone under pressure in country New South Wales, not least struggling sheep farmer Mitch. His crops are failing, his debt is crippling, his old Dad’s health is failing and he is married to a complete bitch. Life offers hope and complication when his lost love Neralie returns to town to run the pub, but then there are the latest machinations of the Water Authority to deal with. They want to cut allocations, raise rates, impose the use of expensive and possibly useless technology and generally make life even harder. A blackly comic take on the state of water usage and abusage in regional Australia, recent events in the Murray-Darling Basin almost make this novel read more like an academic text. Ham has clearly done her research and there are sections where she overdoes the didacticism, but on the whole the story is entertaining and rings very true. Everyone gets a say and a serve – farmers, irrigators, water traders, riparians and ferals – but sympathies are well and truly with the farmers while the villains are corrupt bureaucrats and expedient politicians.