In 2013, at a field day near North Star in northern New South Wales, a paddock of oats was harvested by a brand-new, diesel-guzzling John Deere S670 header, facing off against a team of three Clydesdale horses, powered by hay, pulling an 1860s Meadowbank stripper.<\/p>\n
People laughed at the comparison.<\/p>\n
The laughter is not so loud in 2026.<\/p>\n
A John Deere header will run through up to 1,000 litres of diesel a day. That means a daily cost increase of $1,500 in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
Once ready for the table, produce must be delivered by trucks. In Queensland alone, road transport burns approximately 11m litres of fuel a day.<\/p>\n
From agriculture to mining, from tourism to buying groceries and getting children to school, the tyranny of distance, the long thorn in the side of rural and regional Australia, is exacerbating the angst created by the current hike in fuel prices. In most of the country outside the capital cities, there is simply no option but to drive.<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n The federal government has appointed Anthea Harris as the fuel supply taskforce coordinator<\/a>, a move welcomed by the National Farmers Federation (NFF). But the peak farming and fishing body is concerned the fuel squeeze in the bush could lead to food security issues.<\/p>\n \u201cIf farmers can\u2019t access diesel, they can\u2019t harvest crops, plant crops, or move food and fibre to market. We also have industries like dairy that need fuel to move product every single day,\u201d the NFF president, Hamish McIntyre, said in a statement<\/a> this week. \u201cAustralian agriculture depends on reliable fuel access every day.\u201d<\/p>\n As of Friday, one in every seven service stations in NSW were out of at least one type of fuel.<\/p>\n It is not just agriculture feeling the pinch.<\/p>\n In Lightning Ridge, NSW, Sam Mehan, a third-generation opal miner, lives in a camp powered by solar and a petrol generator, but must travel 80km west to her mine at Grawin.<\/p>\n The diesel price in the Ridge was $3.20 this week \u2013 and climbing.<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty litres a day is normal for me and there\u2019s no way I can afford $64 a day. Every morning I wake up to see the fuel price has gone up again,\u201d says Mehan. She is now contemplating camping in a rooftop tent at her mine.<\/p>\n Opal miner Sam Mehan at her mine in Grawin, 80km west of Lightning Ridge, NSW. It\u2019s \u2018a little bit scary\u2019, she says. Photograph: Mandy McKeesick\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Her camp requires another 10-15 litres of petrol a day to run an air conditioner. \u201cIf the temperature doesn\u2019t drop soon, I might have to make the choice between fuel in the car to get to work or fuel to stay cool.\u201d<\/p>\n When not mining, Mehan works part-time at Chambers of the Black Hand, an underground sculpture museum that is a popular tourist attraction in Lightning Ridge.<\/p>\n \u201cI was paid today and over half my wages went in fuel,\u201d she says. \u201cOur town is built on opal mining and tourism and so everything in the Ridge is uncertain right now and, honestly, a little bit scary.\u201d<\/p>\n Pressure is also being felt in remote Aboriginal communities. The Central Land Council (CLC), based in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, estimates living costs for those communities are 40% higher than in capital cities at the best of times.<\/p>\n Though the federal government supports residents with a remote area allowance<\/a>, deliverable through the tax system, and a Low-Cost Essentials Subsidy scheme<\/a>, designed to reduce the cost of everyday essentials, fuel is already over $4 per litre in some Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe subsidy helps, but fuel prices will quickly erode those savings,\u201d the CLC\u2019s general manager, Dr Josie Douglas, said this week. \u201cPrices for key items like fresh food will rise sharply, and families will struggle to keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n Childcare and schooling are also affected.<\/p>\n Bessie Thomas lives on a cattle station near Wilcannia, NSW, with her husband and three young children. Her nearest major centre is Broken Hill, 300km west.<\/p>\n \u201cThe price rise means the travel costs have almost doubled, and there\u2019s the real possibility of getting to town and then not being able to buy fuel to get home,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n While Thomas\u2019s children are educated through School of the Air, she has neighbours who travel to Broken Hill weekly for childcare, school and sporting commitments.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are concerned they won\u2019t be able to access childcare at all, because they won\u2019t be able to afford it or they will need to save the fuel for farm work.\u201d<\/p>\n Though distances cause additional worries for those in the bush, the Queensland Trucking Association CEO, Gary Mahon, is more concerned about panic buying.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m touching wood here, and there is a level of fragility, but we\u2019re quietly confident that supply will hold,\u201d Mahon said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t have any more tankers than we had three weeks ago so panic buying is really upping the ante on the rhythms of refilling. Some stations are selling faster than we can deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n Although he has not yet heard any reports of fuel theft fromtrucks in northern NSW and Queensland, driver safety is also on Mahon\u2019s mind. \u201cOur drivers and owners are more alert, making sure tanks are locked, and it influences their decisions on where they might pull up for a break,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n With harvest activity ramping up in some agricultural areas, and others preparing to sow, diesel \u2013 and other farm inputs such as urea, an essential fertiliser also affected by the closure of the strait of Hormuz \u2013 will be even more crucial. John Walters, the CEO of Rural Aid, says sustained price increases at more than $3 per litre are \u201csimply not sustainable for farming businesses\u201d.<\/p>\n The Clydesdales may be looking like a viable economic alternative.<\/p>\n Mandy McKeesick is a journalist based in regional Queensland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2013, at a field day near North Star in northern New South Wales, a paddock of oats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-571666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}