They were everywhere at university. The people swarming like ants to find shelter from the downpour of lunchtime rain.
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The rain jackets tied around people's faces and umbrellas piling up on library floors.
Tuesday was another cloudy day, with my afternoon commute consisting of dodging puddles to the bus stop, before grudgingly retrieving my damp washing from my clothes line.
Thanks to Sydney's recent showers, weather has been the chit chat with fellow classmates, before entering a lecture.
It is in these conversations, that I find myself fitting into the mould of compliancy and groaning along with the rest of them; "is it ever going to stop raining?"
It is not until I sit down to write this column, that I realise I don't want it to stop raining.
However unenjoyable the rain might be to students commuting, it's the most refreshing thing to me. Suddenly the juxtapositions in my life becomes overwhelming apparent.
During most of the year, I live and study in Sydney and over summer I return home to work harvest for a local grain company.
The two environments where I spend most of time, could not be more opposite. One involves long hours in a dusty, hot sample stand testing grain into the early hours of the evening. While the other is, time spent in cooled classrooms, where I am lectured about the media and climate change.
My perspective of the drought is the six-hour drive home, when I see the green fade beneath the trees and drop my family friends off to their dried-out properties.
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My experience is the conversations I have with local farmers and truck drivers, as I wish them a Merry Christmas rather than a Happy New Year, when another harvest is cut short due to the scarcity of water.
Yet the real perspectives, are those living everyday with the drought at their back door.
These realities are lost in the offhand comments about Sydney's weather, made from those forgetting about the ongoing struggles.
The last conversation I had about the drought was at my friend's country 21st , when I was overjoyed to hear that a little bit of rain in Dunedoo meant a family could leave their property to join the party.
It's a sad truth that to discuss the current conditions affecting rural Australia, one has to drive out of the city.
I can only hope that students with country roots will continue educating those around them by bringing their different worlds together.
Claire Keenan is a third-year journalism student at the University of NSW.
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