Drought-stricken farmer hand-feeding livestock has no time for government paperwork

A drought-stricken farmer running 3200 sheep on Queensland's Western Downs wants the government to make it easier to access drought assistance funding.

Karen Huskisson, who runs Wattle Downs in Tara, refuses to let the past seven years of drought break her, but the 120-hour work weeks don't leave her a lot of time to be filling out paper work.

Fighting the big dry means working from 4am until well after sundown, seven days a week.

Hand-feeding the livestock is tedious, back-breaking, expensive work.

Currently, the sheep are fed faba beans – a legume high in protein – at a cost of $600 per tonne, or about $10,000 a week, she said.

"There's animals out there that need you and they've got nothing, if you don't get up and feed them, they've got nothing," Ms Huskisson said.

When she's finished on the farm, she makes dinner for her elderly parents, who also live on the property, along with her daughter and two grandchildren.

Thankfully, she says, the property has a bore.

"You can't use it for irrigation and it's not supposed to be portable, but we do drink it because that's what we've got, we've got nothing else," she said.

She has received some financial help - a few hundred dollars from local charities helping pay phone and rates bills, plus a surprise $2000 cheque from the kids of the Jimboomba Gymnastics club, but she says what farmers really need is simpler access to government assistance.

"I don't have time to sit down and fill out all the paper work," she said.

"I would say (to the Prime Minister), make the funding easier for us to get."