In 2013, at a field day near North Star in northern New South Wales, a paddock of oats was harvested by a brand-new, diesel-guzzling John Deere S670 header, facing off against a team of three Clydesdale horses, powered by hay, pulling an 1860s Meadowbank stripper.
People laughed at the comparison.
The laughter is not so loud in 2026.
A John Deere header will run through up to 1,000 litres of diesel a day. That means a daily cost increase of $1,500 in recent weeks.
Once ready for the table, produce must be delivered by trucks. In Queensland alone, road transport burns approximately 11m litres of fuel a day.
From agriculture to mining, from tourism to buying groceries and getting children to school, the tyranny of distance, the long thorn in the side of rural and regional Australia, is exacerbating the angst created by the current hike in fuel prices. In most of the country outside the capital cities, there is simply no option but to drive.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailThe federal government has appointed Anthea Harris as the fuel supply taskforce coordinator, a move welcomed by the National Farmers Federation (NFF). But the peak farming and fishing body is concerned the fuel squeeze in the bush could lead to food security issues.
“If farmers can’t access diesel, they can’t harvest crops, plant crops, or move food and fibre to market. We also have industries like dairy that need fuel to move product every single day,” the NFF president, Hamish McIntyre, said in a statement this week. “Australian agriculture depends on reliable fuel access every day.”
As of Friday, one in every seven service stations in NSW were out of at least one type of fuel.
It is not just agriculture feeling the pinch.
In Lightning Ridge, NSW, Sam Mehan, a third-generation opal miner, lives in a camp powered by solar and a petrol generator, but must travel 80km west to her mine at Grawin.
The diesel price in the Ridge was $3.20 this week – and climbing.
“Twenty litres a day is normal for me and there’s no way I can afford $64 a day. Every morning I wake up to see the fuel price has gone up again,” says Mehan. She is now contemplating camping in a rooftop tent at her mine.
Her camp requires another 10-15 litres of petrol a day to run an air conditioner. “If the temperature doesn’t drop soon, I might have to make the choice between fuel in the car to get to work or fuel to stay cool.”
When not mining, Mehan works part-time at Chambers of the Black Hand, an underground sculpture museum that is a popular tourist attraction in Lightning Ridge.
“I was paid today and over half my wages went in fuel,” she says. “Our town is built on opal mining and tourism and so everything in the Ridge is uncertain right now and, honestly, a little bit scary.”
Pressure is also being felt in remote Aboriginal communities. The Central Land Council (CLC), based in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, estimates living costs for those communities are 40% higher than in capital cities at the best of times.
Though the federal government supports residents with a remote area allowance, deliverable through the tax system, and a Low-Cost Essentials Subsidy scheme, designed to reduce the cost of everyday essentials, fuel is already over $4 per litre in some Indigenous communities.
“The subsidy helps, but fuel prices will quickly erode those savings,” the CLC’s general manager, Dr Josie Douglas, said this week. “Prices for key items like fresh food will rise sharply, and families will struggle to keep up.”
Childcare and schooling are also affected.
Bessie Thomas lives on a cattle station near Wilcannia, NSW, with her husband and three young children. Her nearest major centre is Broken Hill, 300km west.
“The price rise means the travel costs have almost doubled, and there’s the real possibility of getting to town and then not being able to buy fuel to get home,” Thomas said.
While Thomas’s children are educated through School of the Air, she has neighbours who travel to Broken Hill weekly for childcare, school and sporting commitments.
“They are concerned they won’t be able to access childcare at all, because they won’t be able to afford it or they will need to save the fuel for farm work.”
Though distances cause additional worries for those in the bush, the Queensland Trucking Association CEO, Gary Mahon, is more concerned about panic buying.
“I’m touching wood here, and there is a level of fragility, but we’re quietly confident that supply will hold,” Mahon said. “But we don’t have any more tankers than we had three weeks ago so panic buying is really upping the ante on the rhythms of refilling. Some stations are selling faster than we can deliver.”
Although he has not yet heard any reports of fuel theft fromtrucks in northern NSW and Queensland, driver safety is also on Mahon’s mind. “Our drivers and owners are more alert, making sure tanks are locked, and it influences their decisions on where they might pull up for a break,” he says.
With harvest activity ramping up in some agricultural areas, and others preparing to sow, diesel – and other farm inputs such as urea, an essential fertiliser also affected by the closure of the strait of Hormuz – will be even more crucial. John Walters, the CEO of Rural Aid, says sustained price increases at more than $3 per litre are “simply not sustainable for farming businesses”.
The Clydesdales may be looking like a viable economic alternative.
• Mandy McKeesick is a journalist based in regional Queensland
