Dubbo residents woke to a red haze on September 23, with the city covered by dust that had swept its way from central Australia.

It proceeded all the way to Sydney and even made its way as far as Brisbane on the same day.

While the cars have since been washed, the clean-up task won’t be as easy for farmers, who won’t know their fate for a while.

Sheep in various parts of the state still have an orange-coloured wool which could cause problems at shearing and sale time.

Nyngan farmer Anthony Gibson spoke to the Daily Liberal last week and said that in all his time on the land he had never seen anything like the storm.

“Even when I was a kid and we had a drought in 1980 there was nothing like this storm,” he said.

“I’m not sure how the cropping farmers coped with the storm but even for us with sheep it probably isn’t going to end up being real good.

“If the quality of your sheep and wool is off by 1 per cent, then that 1 per cent can be about eight cents per kilogram.

“When you have a lot of sheep, that’s a lot of kilograms and eight cents can add up quite quickly.”

Meanwhile it appears as though the storm of a fortnight ago was not a freak occurrence.

Footage has been posted on video-sharing website Youtube of a storm which apparently raged between Broken Hill and Wilcannia in December 2007.

The footage depicts a couple driving on an outback road with a thick plume of dust up ahead.

They proceed into the storm with the footage going dark as the driver of the vehicle says “that’s surreal”.

The validity of the footage was backed up by a fellow user.

“I love Broken Hill. I live there actually and that is real it went pitch black at like 3.30. High school kids weren’t allowed out of the building. I’m in primary so I was home by then when it went pitch black I went outside and it looked like midnight.”

ben.walker@ruralpres s.com