MADELEINE COOREY is a correspondent for Agence France-Presse based in Sydney. She has worked for AFP in Hong Kong and Afghanistan before moving back to her home town earlier this year. She was previously a journalist on The Australian. NICK SQUIRES is the Sydney-based correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and South China Morning Post. He also contributes to the New Zealand Herald and the Sunday Herald in Scotland, and works for ABC's international desk.

Some of the FCA members in Goulburn, thought of as rainmakers by the locals

The last thing a journalist venturing into the countryside to write a story about drought wants to see is rain.

So when a group of foreign correspondents went to the inland New South Wales city of Goulburn to see one of the country's driest towns, we were at the very least surprised to be witnessing one of the area's biggest downpours in recent years.

"It gives a different angle to the story," Foreign Correspondents' Association president Urs Wälterlin told us as we arrived at Goulburn's council chambers amid morning showers. Mayor Paul Stephenson, meanwhile, mentioned something about a "green drought."

Six weeks previously the town had been completely dry; but in the days before the FCA visit, Goulburn had had some of its best rain since 2001. Despite the puddles and patches of green we saw, the town is still desperately short of water. Goulburn's dams are at about 24 percent water capacity, with about half of this amount considered unusable due to contamination and sediment. Officials estimate the supply will only last until just after summer.

Mayor Stephenson has some of the most radical measures in the country in mind to prevent the city from being the first in Australia to run out of water. His most ambitious is to recycle all Goulburn's water waste and pump it back into the city. It's an unknown whether residents, who live under strict water restrictions with good grace, will accept treated waste as their daily water.

Tony Morrison, a farmer, who has 7000 merinos on a property outside Goulburn has been hard hit by the drought. Photo credit: Nick Squires

Water manager Matt O'Rourke told us of the impact of water restrictions on the town, including the fact that the larger industries in the city have been asked to cut usage by 30 percent. Socially there has also been an impact -- sports events have been cancelled because the grounds are so hard they are dangerous to play on while households are now reusing bath and shower water for other chores.

After lunch the group visited a local farm. Local livestock farmer Tony Morrison's family has lived in Goulburn for more than a hundred years and, at the time of the visit, most of the dams on his property had been out of use for years. Although, yes, it was still raining and began to pour down while we were on his property, Morrison said weeks previously it had been so dry and dusty he couldn't believe it would ever rain again.

The rest of the afternoon we were driven on a tour around the historic city to view its old brewery and a former mental asylum as well as Goulburn's most famous building, its maximum security jail. The group disbanded having seen no emaciated lambs and no red, dusty fields but happy to be thought of as rainmakers by the locals.

Little David hand-feeding grass to the sheep as there is not much for them to graze. Photo credit: Urs Wälterlin

Matt O'Rourke, the water services manager with the local council Photo credit: Nick Squires

Tony Morrison, a Goulburn farmer Photo credit: Nick Squires