David Arnold, the man who oversees the Rural Financial Counselling Service  Central Southern Region based at Longreach, said that in the days since the package was announced there had been a dramatic increase in calls from graziers in need.

``There was limited uptake of the Transitional Farm Family Payment that preceded this -  probably a dozen clients over our whole service area - whereas with this one, we've probably had about the same number over the last week, and our counsellors are being inundated with calls,'' he said.

``Under the guidelines the applicant has to have an initial meeting with a rural financial counsellor, so we are being swamped.'' 

He said the Human Services Drought Bus had visited the Dirranbandi-Hebel-Bollon region last week, which had given his counsellors in that area a lot of follow-up calls to make.

``Our man in the Gulf is booked up for eight weeks.

Given the geography, it takes time, and while some enquiries can be dealt with simply, others can be tied up for quite a while with debt mediation.'' 

Mr Arnold said that while recent rain had brought some respite, counsellors in southern parts of Queensland were reporting an increasing workload.

Further south, Karen Tully chairs the equivalent service for the South West region and agreed that while the immediate pressure on graziers had eased a little, the drought was by no means broken and their clients were still in a non-productive state with expenses mounting.

``Our staff workload is phenomenal. People are looking at rejigging business plans and re-evaluating where they're at,'' she said.