Balonne stops as QLD drought bites

Inland river dry, drought declared, fire risk up

The Balonne has stopped, and grazier Keith Allwood says it is the first time the river has stopped running in more than five years.

It is a local, measurable fact, and it has already happened.

Water that used to move past St George is now sitting in disconnected holes, and every one of those holes is getting smaller.

The declaration on paper

The Queensland Government drought map, as of 1 August 2026, has Balonne, Goondiwindi, Southern Downs and parts of Maranoa drought-declared.

Those are the first shire-level declarations in two years, which matters because the state only stepped out of its previous long dry a couple of seasons back.

That earlier event ran from 2013 into 2024, so graziers around Surat, Texas and Inglewood have barely had time to rebuild.

The El Nino behind it

El Nino was declared in June 2026, and the signal is already unusually strong for this stage of the cycle.

When the central Pacific runs warm, the rising air and rainfall that normally sit near Australia shift east, and eastern inland Australia loses its dependable winter and spring rain.

The Bureau of Meteorology September outlook points to below-average rainfall across the south and east, with warmer days south of the tropics, after soil moisture deficits expanded across the east by July 2026.

A positive Indian Ocean Dipole later in the year would reinforce the dry by cutting the moisture feed off Australia's north-west.

The tell is hydrology, not the fire map

The dry is not even, because this El Nino has not treated the continent as one paddock.

South Australia has had a wet year in places like the Eyre Peninsula, fed by Southern Ocean fronts that pay no attention to what the Pacific is doing.

The same event is showing up in southern Queensland as a river that quit running.

"We are noticing extremes in what happens with our climates, extreme wet, extreme dry."

Empty hay sheds at Texas

Greg Finlay runs a mixed operation at Texas, and after 28 years on the place he is looking at empty hay sheds for the first time.

Finlay, 58, says his property has recorded 167 mm (6.6 in) of rain year to date against an annual average of 650 mm (25.6 in).

He produced about 40 percent of his usual hay and is now destocking, with stock going on agistment to the south.

Wildlife Empire Rescue director Tennille Bankes, based at Inglewood, says animals are travelling further than usual to find water and feed.

That is the same signal a fisher reads in a shrinking hole, where everything alive concentrates around whatever water is left.

Fire risk stacked on the dry

AFAC released its seasonal outlook on 19 August 2026, showing increased spring fire risk in areas of every jurisdiction except the ACT.

Elevated risk areas include south-east Queensland and north-eastern New South Wales, which is much the same country now carrying drought declarations.

AFAC chief executive Rob Webb put the emphasis on local knowledge rather than the map.

"The variety of risk factors across different regions reinforces the need for communities to understand their local conditions and prepare early."

"While some areas are facing an elevated risk of fire this spring, bushfires can still occur in regions with a normal seasonal outlook."

Scrubby Creek Rural Fire Brigade volunteer Dennis Dwyer says the window for hazard-reduction burning is shorter this year.

University of Tasmania professor of pyrogeography and fire science David Bowman points to the fuel that grew back after the 2019-20 fires.

"There's a lot of water in the landscape, and that's resulted in a lot of productivity, a lot of fuel."