At the height of western Queensland's drought, Louise Martin's property near Tambo was completely desolate.
Native grass turned to dust, lizards and emus departed the land, and livestock perished in the scorching heat.
"Sometimes there was not a blade of grass," the sheep grazier recalls.
"It was just living day-by-day and week-by-week."
But while "life-changing" rainfall has now transformed the landscape, the long-term impact of the dry has also left its mark, and climatologists are warning there are more hard times ahead.
'Rain is everything'
In 2013, the equivalent of one third of Queensland was covered by drought declarations.
Just two years later that figure had grown to 88 per cent, and Ms Martin's family had been forced to sell off most of their flock of 4,000 merino sheep.
"We did not have a single drop of surface water on Macfarlane [Station in 2015], not a drop of water," she says.
"That was my low point."
The drought finally broke in late 2021 and after three consecutive La Niña events the dusty plains have been transformed into a sea of green.
But in the wake of the "worst drought in living memory" there's a trail of empty cattle and sheep stations.
Ms Martin says while a decade of waiting for unreliable rain has taken its toll, it's also brought growth.
"I've learned to be really flexible and be prepared to change plans at any time [and] to be resilient," she says.
"Rain is everything — we are totally reliant on the weather for our productivity … if it doesn't rain, we don't get the profit.
"I try not to dwell in the past, you've got to be positive about stuff.
"But sometimes you can't help but get a little nervous thinking, 'I hope we're not going into another drought.'"
'There will be another drought'
Janette Lindesay, professor of climatology at the Australian National University, studies rainfall, drought and adaptation.
While predicting specific events is difficult, she says one thing for certain is "there will always be another drought."
"We can be sure these extreme circumstances will occur again," she says.
"There will be another drought. Whether it will be as intense or as long as the last few is not something we can tell at this point, but there will be another drought … and the severity of droughts on the whole will increase."
As the globe warms, Professor Lindesay says all major weather events will increase in intensity, and the lessons from past events will be critical for communities to endure them.
"We're seeing more extreme conditions whether those are drier conditions, more protracted and deeper drought or whether it's rainfall coming in heavier rainfall events and floods," she says.
The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted Australia's weather systems will likely shift to an El Niño phase this year, meaning the return of hot, dry weather.
Lessons learned from mistakes made
The nine years Charleville grazier Kenton Peart spent managing his drought-affected cattle properties in south-west Queensland were tough.
He says the key was planning and acting early, but that wasn't always easy.
"Most years we would have reasonable grass by December and we would adjust our livestock numbers coming into winter accordingly," he says.
"But [that] failed eight years out of nine, so we had to adjust and go back to the drawing board and we work now towards a late January."
He says the dry taught graziers a lot about pasture management that they could reflect on in better seasons.
"We learnt our best lessons from the mistakes that we made," he says.
"We're finding that really good infrastructure in general is great drought infrastructure because the better you can manage your country in a good time, the better you can manage your country in a tough time."
Back in Tambo, grazier Louise Martin says the drought taught her to "rise to the challenge".
"We're hopefully at the other end," she says.
"Hopefully 2022 will lead to a good 2023 because all our country in western Queensland needs not one good season — we need several good seasons."
