After the hail, Mallee growers must harvest what’s left

Lachlan Foott may have lost well over half the seed from 400 hectares of canola near Birchip, but he still intends to harvest the damaged paddocks. Even if the machinery collects little, he needs to clear the crop residue so he can sow through the land next year. The hail may have taken much of the return; it has not taken away the work.⁠¹

At Lascelles, fellow Mallee grower Travis Horman faces another obstacle to salvaging his harvest: getting to it. Alongside preparing harvesting machinery, he has been digging drains beside flooded roads and gateways. He estimates hail shredded up to 70 per cent of his lupins, while damaged cereal heads and flattened crops have left grain on the ground.⁠¹

Their accounts, published by ABC Victoria on Friday, 6 November, reveal the farm-level consequences of the storm that crossed parts of Victoria’s Mallee on Monday afternoon, 2 November. They describe a promising harvest interrupted at Birchip and a harvest start postponed at Lascelles. The damage is visible, but the amount these growers can recover—and their final losses—remains unsettled.⁠¹⁠¹¹

Foott had already begun harvesting before the storm. He was shifting back towards Birchip to cut more canola when the weather turned. At his property, he said, the intense rain and hail passed in about 20 minutes. He estimated the front was five to 10 kilometres wide there, widening and intensifying as it moved east. Those are his observations at the farm, not a surveyed damage corridor.⁠¹

The canola was the best he had grown. Afterwards, he told ABC: “It looks majority gone; it just looks white.” But he drew a clear distinction between what the paddocks looked like and what a harvester would establish.⁠¹

A header is the harvesting machine that will show how much seed remains to be collected. The 400 hectares is the area Foott says was hit hard, not a confirmed area of total destruction. His possible loss above 50 per cent is a preliminary estimate, not a measured yield result. And even after harvesting, the yield the undamaged crop would have delivered cannot be known directly.⁠¹

Foott’s crop is insured, but that does not make an insurance claim equivalent to bringing in an exceptional harvest. He told ABC that farmers tend to estimate yields conservatively when arranging cover, potentially leaving them underinsured in an unusually good season. That is his account of the problem, rather than a finding about every affected grower’s policy. No completed payout figure has been established.⁠¹

His decision to keep harvesting makes the immediate burden plain. A paddock with little seed left can still require a machinery pass to prepare it for the following season. The job remains, even where much of its expected reward may have disappeared.

Horman had been preparing to start harvest within days when Monday’s hail struck. His estimate of up to 70 per cent damage applies to his lupins—not to all his crops, and not to production across Lascelles. He said his barley was riper than his wheat and that many barley heads had been knocked off. Flattened crops are making the remaining harvest harder to collect.⁠¹

He also described neighbours’ lupins suffering what he called “100 per cent damage”, with stalks left standing and pods on the ground. That is Horman’s account of what he saw on other properties, not a separate assessment of those farms. It cannot establish complete losses across the district.⁠¹

Different gauges around his farm recorded uneven rainfall of up to 40 millimetres. Water has obstructed roads and gateways he needs to use, adding drainage work to machinery preparation and postponing his intended harvest start. There is no established number of days for that delay. If trucks cannot enter some paddocks, he may have to store grain in bags there; that remains a contingency, not grain already reported bagged or stranded.⁠¹

Before the storm, Horman had expected the biggest season he had seen. He said his 85-year-old father had never seen anything like its promise either. That makes the blow sharper, but those expectations are not a measured regional production record against which losses can yet be calculated.⁠¹

ABC reported thousands of hectares affected across the Mallee, with damage through districts including Birchip, Wycheproof and Quambatook. Wheat, barley, lentils, canola and lupins were among the crops hit. The detailed figures for Foott and Horman, however, come from their accounts in that report; they are not independently assessed farm losses or a completed regional tally.⁠¹

Separate reporting by Stock & Land on 3 November described the previous afternoon’s narrow hail band and damage to a small corner of a barley crop at Dumosa. It corroborates the storm and some agricultural damage, while also illustrating how uneven the outcome could be. It does not independently establish the larger affected-area estimate.⁠¹¹

The Bureau of Meteorology’s warning on 2 November covered large hail, damaging winds and heavy rain in parts of the Mallee, Northern Country and Wimmera; a cancellation followed that evening. That warning area was a forecast of danger, not a map showing that every district within it suffered crop losses.⁠¹²⁠¹³

The next meaningful totals must come from harvesting and insurance assessments, neither of which has an announced completion date. Until then, hectares hit, visible crop damage, seed recovered and insured losses remain different measures. For these growers, the first task is more immediate than putting a final price on the storm: reach the paddocks, collect what remains and leave the land ready to grow again.⁠¹