Farmers grapple with drought as Victoria records hottest decade on record

Dry creek beds would run, drainage lines would fill, swamp beds would come to life and Jack Smith Lake - a 2700-hectare state game reserve on the Gippsland coast - would flood.

But in the last 20 years, Ms Balderstone - who runs a fine wool Merino, prime lamb and beef cattle enterprise at Warrigal Creek - has seen it flood once.

"We don't seem to be having the really good easterly rains we used to get here in Central Gippsland," she said.

"So those things are changing and it's getting harder for farmers."

Dry conditions throughout Central and East Gippsland have forced the hands of many farmers to destock, reducing their herds as eastern Victoria experiences below-average rainfall.

Ms Balderstone estimates she has reduced her livestock numbers by up to 30 per cent in the last 18 months due to dry conditions and ordinary weather patterns.

"I've been living in this area since 1980 and 2018/19 was certainly our hardest year financially, physically and mentally on the farm," she said.

"Certainly at Giffard maybe even us at Darriman the rainfall records are the lowest on record and 380 (millimetres) in 2018 and just over 400 this year is very, very low consecutively ... when the average is 580-600."

From April 2018, a big portion of her flock and herd were introduced to stock containment on full rations or placed in smaller sacrificed paddocks in an attempt to protect pasture and soils.

"We spent over $40 per DSE [dry sheep equivalent] on supplementary feeding, and although in the end we had areas that were blowing, the damage to our country was not as great as on some farms," Ms Balderstone said.

"It has saved our pastures and meant our recovery has been the advantage but it was a huge financial cost to do it that way so I cannot image how people around Bairnsdale and Stratford are coping feeding again already."

Victoria had its warmest decade on record, with seven of the past 10 years experiencing below average rainfall.

Data released by the Bureau of Meteorology indicates the state warmed 0.84 of a degree above the long-term average.

It means 2010-2019 was 0.3 degrees warmer than any previous decade.

Bureau of Meteorology senior climatologist Blair Trewin said the Victoria had a mix of wet periods and prolonged dry spells, and below-average rainfall between in the last 10 years.

"Essentially what Victoria had was an extremely wet period in 2010 and 2011 particularly from August 2010 through to February 2011 and that was accompanied by wide-spread flooding in many parts of Victoria, particularly in the north," Dr Trewin said.

"We also had a very wet period through the middle part of 2016 so those were two real standout wet periods and 2010, 2011 and 2016 all had above average rainfall in Victoria but the other seven years of the decade were below average."

Kerang recorded the hottest temperature in the state in the last decade, reaching 47.6 degrees on January 25, 2019.

Meanwhile, Mount Hotham was the coldest place in Victoria, dropping to -10.4 degrees on August 28, 2018.

"Every year of the 2010s has been at least 0.4 of a degree above the long-term average. In fact, you have to go back to 1996 for the last time we had a year which was below the long-term average," Dr Trewin said.

"However, the hottest individual on record day wasn't in the last decade - it was 2007 - but if you look at the ranking of the warmest years, the eight warmest years on record have all occurred since 2007."

Climate indicators also revealed there had been a rise in extreme high temperatures in the last 20 years.

"One indicator of that is the frequency it reaches 45 degrees in Victoria and in the whole 18 years from 1983 to 2001, there was only one day during that period when it reached 45 degrees anywhere in the state," Dr Trewin said.

"But since the start of the 21st century, it's been happening about one-and-a-half days [a year] on average so we've seen a really sharp jump in frequency of those very high extremes."

The wettest day on record for the decade was February 10, 2012 at Pennyroyal Creek, about 30 kilometres south-east of Colac, which received 223 millimetres of rain.

"In absolute terms, the driest part of the state has been the far north-west ... where the annual average rainfall is only about 250 millimetres," Dr Trewin said.

Areas which received significantly below average rainfall included the Mallee and Wimmera, parts of central Victoria and East Gippsland.

"Whereas the south-west of Victoria has been fairly close to average for the decade and also the north-east has been fairly close to average," he said.

Indicators show parts of the Wimmera experienced their driest period on record between 2012 and 2016 where it was drier than normal in western parts of the state.

"The most abnormal extreme we've seen has been the real persistence of the dry conditions in Gippsland in the last three years," Dr Trewin said.

"We've now had three significantly dry years in a row - this year not as much as though as 2017 and 2018 - but it's been quite a standout."