Andy McLeod has been raising sheep, cattle and goats on Coombah Station, in far west New South Wales for the last 30 years.
But this season, for the first time this century, he's planting crops.
The lake on his property - part of the Great Darling Anabranch located between Wentworth and Broken Hill - has dried up, leaving a dusty pasture, rich in moist subsoil, that's perfect for a year-long harvest.
“It all dried up back in January,” says Mr McLeod, who runs the station with his wife, Fiona.
“It got to about 12 feet deep, where we're standing.
"It took two years to recede by the time the floods had gone past.”
The Great Darling Anabranch had been fed by water from successive floods in the country's north, a wet that reached saturation point after the Queensland floods of 2010.
But the recent dry years have seen the lakes shrink, the fauna disappear and the fish fry.
“The lake bed is about three kilometres long by two or three hundred metres wide,” says Mr McLeod.
“When we first began working it, you couldn't walk without stepping on fish, there were millions of them, but they make great fertiliser.”
Mr McLeod is now sowing oats and sorghum that grows to nearly eight feet high.
He says he expects to shift thousands of tonnes of oats, hay, wheat and barley before the lake begins to fill again, probably after the summer rains have soaked the north and spilled down to the Darling.
"It's a very good money spinner, but a lot of work goes into it," he said.
"I think I'd prefer to chase goats, actually."
When the water returns and the fish come back to life, Mr McLeod will abandon the lake for his flock, scarcely giving a thought to the land he once tilled beneath the surface.
"I normally don't go near the water," he says, "unless I'm having a shower."