The secret of comedy is timing.

We set out from Sydney for five-hour flight to Cunnamulla to do a drought story.

But even before we crossed the Blue Mountains, rain was streaming across the windshield of the ABC chopper and if anything it only got heavier as we flew north by north-west.

Plan B might need to include drought-affected graziers celebrating the first decent drink their paddocks have had in months.

The problem with that plan is that soaking rain tends to bring everything to a standstill on properties, so if you cannot see it from where you land, you are going to have to imagine it.

Widgeegoara is a wool, sheep meat and cattle operation around 100 kilometres south of Cunnamulla.

Jane and Boyd Bignell were all but cut off from the outside world by the time we touched down near the homestead after nearly 20 millimetres of rain.

They suggested ABC News crews tend to bring rain with them whenever they have visited the place, so why did we not come sooner?

As modest as it might seem to folks who measure their yearly rainfall totals by the metre, this was, if nothing else, a morale-boosting cloudburst and an excuse to break out the drizabones for the first time in months.

"Our paddocks will get a little kick out of this rain and hopefully if there's a bit more over the next few weeks, the benefits will be even better," Mr Bignell said.

"But more generally this rain will provide a good circuit-breaker in the saleyards after heavy yardings recently saw the price plummet in both sheep and cattle markets."

In many cases things will be just too wet over the next week for mustering and yarding stock, so supply will tighten up and hopefully that will see prices lift.

In recent weeks there has been heavy congestion on travelling stock routes around Queensland and New South Wales and it has been tough finding space on trucks, in feedlots or at meat works.

Mr Bignell had hoped to have moved a lot more stock to agistment a month to six weeks ago, but could not arrange for them to be trucked off his property until last week - just ahead of the showers.

His plan was to lighten the load on his sparse paddocks before winter and before they had been picked clean.

Roos make a meal out of Widgeegoara

Mr Bignell believes roo numbers can be balanced by rebuilding the market for roo meat and skins. ( ABC News: Giulio Saggin )

Unfortunately, big mobs of kangaroos that have bred up over the past three good seasons are making a meal of what is left to eat on Widgeegoara.

Mr Bignell reckons the problem is as bad as it was a decade ago when tens of thousands of kangaroos moved on the place.

As we flew over the property it was clear that the Bignells had as many roos as they did sheep – by their estimation as many as 10,000.

The creation of permanent water supplies piped from artesian bores and the work they have put in to eradicating predators like wild dogs has given roo numbers a huge boost in recent years.

"The whole show is out of balance. I don't think the numbers would have been anything like this in the old days. When the dams dried up that was it," he said.

"Now we cut back our total grazing pressure, and move off as much stock as we can and within weeks the kangaroos have all but denuded the place."

Mr Bignell and his neighbours believe the answer to finding a sustainable balance of roo numbers lies with rebuilding the market for roo meat and skins.

"At 60 cents a kilo, the meat trade just isn't viable and until very recently the market for skins didn't make it worthwhile for shooters either," he said.

"A good roo shooter can harvest 100 animals a night, so within a few weeks you can put a big dent in the numbers - if everyone tackles them together."

He says the flow-on effect of that is important for small towns like Cunnamulla and Charleville, which until a few years ago employed 30 to 40 locals in its kangaroo abattoir.

The export meat trade alone was worth $120 million - two thirds of that went to Russia.

But meat hygiene and other quality issues brought the trade to a halt.

The locals reckon until there is a price on their head - the big mobs bounding around this autumn will have the run of a lot of properties.