Walgett, Brewarrina and Bourke councils, collectively known as the Outback Shires Alliance, sent letters to local MPs and state and federal agriculture ministers.

Meanwhile Walgett Shire Council, in consultation with landholders and business owners, has come up with the Walgett Drought Sustainability Business Plan highlighting how the other two levels of government can assist.

Walgett mayor Bill Murray said the term 'natural disaster' more accurately reflected the impact of drought on the local economy.

A natural disaster declaration "would trigger a range of assistance including funding and low-interest loans to tide over both landholders and businesses operators," he said.

Employment subsidies would mean local businesses did not have to cut staff, he said, while a substantial capital infrastructure grant to Walgett Shire would also allow council to engage local landholders, businesses and their equipment to undertake identified infrastructure backlog works.

"Longer term strategies would include things like the averaging of farm incomes over a longer period and financial measures aimed at assisting landholders to drought-proof their operations during productive seasons as this would reduce future reliance on government," he said.

Walgett Shire Council also called for new cap and bore schemes for areas without existing schemes to improve water security for stock watering.

Bourke mayor Andrew Lewis said the situation in his shire, and business confidence, had slightly improved since about January.

"When the Prime Minister visited in February he called it a natural disaster and we thought we'd be able to get some assistance but that didn't figure in the money," he said.

The situation was worse in parts of Brewarrina and Walgett, he said, but Bourke could not be complacent.

"If we don't get some rain in late winter and early spring the situation will be severe again," Cr Lewis said.

"I would welcome the politicians to come out and see the situation again."

Brewarrina mayor Matthew Slack-Smith, who described the condition of his own property as "desolate" said the area had not received any run-off in the past two-and-a-half years. He backed calls for transport subsidies, but questioned the government's emphasis on drought preparedness.

"How do you prepare for drought when you're two-and-a-half years into the worst one you've had?" he said.

"It's like having iceberg awareness classes on the Titanic, the mindset's good but the timing's terrible." Stories of the shire's landholders struggling to feed stock were not uncommon, Cr Slack-Smith said, and they urgently needed cash input.

"One bloke sent some sheep down to Forbes for agistment and he may have lost up to 1000 of them in a cold snap... they go from a warm climate with no feed and they're in a weakened state, but they have to be moved because the fodder's gone," he said.

The drought had long-term, possibly irreversible ramifications for local families and communities, Cr Slack-Smith said.

"We're losing our youth from the farms," Cr Slack-Smith said.

"They might come back, but after seeing this, why would they want to?"