It has been a month since the drought broke at Australia's largest operating sheep station Rawlinna, after heavy rainfall and flooding battered parts of the Nullarbor Plain.
Already the deluge of more than 290 millimetres - which filled rain gauges for the first time in six years - has transformed the sprawling red dirt with green pick and lakes of water.
"The country is looking absolutely magnificent in terms of the grass and vegetation that is in the ground," Rawlinna station manager Jimmy Wood told Farm Weekly on Monday.
"There is green feed as far as you can see and sheep don't need to go anywhere near a trough with the amount of surface water that is on the ground."
The severe weather event pushed this year's rain total four times to more than the whole of 2023 - in just two months.
For Mr Wood the rainfall was bittersweet, as rising water levels drowned the generators and damaged infrastructure and buildings including staff accommodation, the cookhouse and the main homestead.
He said there was still just over half-a-metre of water through the workshop and homestead and about double that through the cookhouse.
"It will probably be another two to three weeks before the water is out of the buildings entirely," Mr Wood said.
"But the sheep are fighting fit - they are big, solid and running like the wind."
Moisture in the ground and 30 degree days have helped feed to grow, and Mr Wood expected this would continue over several months.
Summer grasses have germinated across the northern parts of the station and speargrass in the south.
"There's that much moisture, it is absolutely unbelievable," he said.
"The speargrass is what we really want to carry through for the winter and a couple of winter showers will keep that going.
"The sheep perform really well on the speargrass, it is a native grass and grows really well here in winter rain."
Unfortunately, Merino ewes were mated in December, off the back of a string of dry seasons.
As a result of this Mr Wood said lambing would not necessarily be booming, however those that did hit the ground would survive and be in good health.
His best guess was that lambing percentages would reach an 80 per cent average overall, up on 50pc last year.
"There might be paddocks where we get 100pc this year, depending on how good the ewes were when we joined them," Mr Wood said.
"But the lambs that do drop will be big, healthy and much easier to deal with.
"These conditions will certainly set the ewes up to be much healthier when they are joined again later this year.
"We will notice how much of a difference this green feed will have at lambing time next year.
"We will be able to work them a little bit harder and the whole process will be much simpler than it has been."
Mr Wood said he had spoken to a hydrologist who labelled the rainfall and floods at Rawlinna a one-in-2500-year event.
He said it wasn't a bad way to wrap up six years spent managing Rawlinna and that the station should largely look after itself now with green feed.
Given the downpour held up sheep placement after shearing, Mr Wood will spend his final three weeks finishing the job.
Staff, who were forced to evacuate the station, have also returned, with a few more set to arrive next week.
"At the moment sheep are in large holding paddocks, but what this rain will do is allow us to run the numbers a little higher than we did before," he said.
"I had very conservative stocking rates planned with about 200-head per paddock, we can easily double or triple that in a lot of places.
"We will be able to keep pushing sheep out and that will be quite easy to do, as everything is so green and we won't have to worry about watering them too much.
"They will just find a lake and live on that for a few months."
Mr Wood will also now hold onto a few wethers that he was planning to sell, keeping numbers close to 30,000-head at the one million hectare station.
Separately, he expressed his gratitude for everyone who supported the station and its staff during the floods.
"We are really thankful for the community support," he said.
"The green grass has certainly lifted everyone's spirits.
"This is absolutely what the country has been looking for and I'm so glad I got to see it (before my departure at the end of this month)."
