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Pastoralist backs call for dust disaster declaration

A western division pastoralist says he supports calls for the far western New South Wales to be declared a natural disaster area after last week's severe dust storms.

A public meeting on the issue will be held at Nundooka Station today and will be attended by the federal MP for Farrer, Sussan Ley, along with the pastoralist Ken Turner who says the clean-up has been costly for landholders.

"There's a lot of roads that are impassable, there's a lot of fences covered with sand, there's troughs totally disappeared under the sand," he said.

"There's a lot of significant damage, not to mention the damage to the natural vegetation that the livestock eat."

- ABC

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Locals begin clean-up in flood-ravaged Mitchell

16:01 EDT Residents of the small Queensland town of Mitchell say more than three-quarters of the town's homes are "completely stuffed" after they were swamped by an unprecedented flood over the weekend.