The town of Nyngan in the rugged heart of New South Wales is no stranger to Australia’s weather extremes. Struck down by floods in 1990, it now sits at the centre of Australia’s worst drought in close to a century.

Nyngan, which lies halfway between Sydney to the east and the far-western mining town of Broken Hill, may have been one of the first communities to be hit by the latest drought seven years ago but large swaths of Australia have followed in its dusty wake.