Forget transport subsidies, a former Tamworth man has promised he can make it rain for a small fee of $10,000.
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‘Rainmaker’ Peter Stevens has been using his Atmospheric Ionisation Research Machine for 30 years, and claims to have a 100 per cent success rate.
While he now resides “in a fertile valley” north of Perth he is only asking for $10,000 to cover travel and accommodation costs of bringing his rain making machine to NSW, and ending the drought.
While many people believe Mr Stevens to be the modern day “mad scientist”, there are also plenty more that claim his machine can create weather events, including in the North West.
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In 2006 Moree cotton grower Bruce Harris hired Mr Stevens and his machine, telling The Leader at the time that it “saved our bacon a bit.”
“We desperately needed some rain. We got a bit and that was a huge help,” Mr Harris said at the time.
He has also previously fired the machine up in Tamworth, Uralla and Guyra.
The machine magnifies the suns rays with a series of mirrors and infrared source of heat, as well as a series of magnets, with the secret science being that the magnets are somehow paired north to north in a complete disregard for physics as we know it.
That light and heat is then directed back into the sky where it “gives an intense warm section of air that charges particles in the atmosphere” and causes clouds to form and, generally within 24 hours, rain.
“I have made it rain all over Australia, and in California and the Arizona desert - I caused eight inches where they only get two and a half annually,” Mrt Stevens said.
“I moved away from Tamworth in 2012. How much rain has the region had since?”
The plan for NSW would be to set the machine up, which is approximately two metres in diameter, at either Bourke or Lightning Ridge, or even Condobolin where he claims to “have caused quite a bit of rain before.”
“If I set up out there for seven days I could cause quite a lot of rain over the state, but I wouldn’t do that, the ground is too dry and not ready for a lot at once,” Mr Stevens said.
“The best would be to cause an inch or two, and then do a few follow ups over the next three months. Causing a rain event is amazing, and quite a wonderful sight to see.”
Mr Stevens has been “a bit surprised that no one has contracted his services yet”, although understands that farmers “don’t have a lot of money at the moment.”
“I don’t do it for the money, I do it for the result and it can benefit the whole country,” he said.
“If you can make it rain people are happy to pay, but at the same time I need to pay to transport the machine and camp out for a week – $10,000 isn’t much.”
Previously Mr Stevens has been asked to produce several of the machines that could be sold off for a reported $15 million each, although he believes that having any more than three machines on the planet could mess with the natural environment too much and “ruin livelihoods”.
The machine has previously been implicated in creating the the infamous 1985 Casino floods, while Mr Stevens said he is not liked by the West Australian government for creating rain while certain events are on.
The inventor and self proclaimed “imaginer” came into contact with the technology when he met creator Jack ‘Rainmaker’ Toyer at an Inventors meeting in Casino in 1985, before the pair and the machine where on display at Brisbane World Expo in 1988.
“I won’t divulge the secrets because no one will believe it, and people just can’t cope when you go against physics but it does work,” Mr Stevens said.
“I have been doing it for thirty years and have never failed – I always get a rain event.”
