Colin Falls grows a crop that is so bright you could see it from an aircraft at 40,000 feet.
He knows this, he says, because he has seen other peoples' canola crops while peering out of an aeroplane window while travelling at such a height.
![Colin Falls is a farmer from the plains north of Bendigo. He has a cracking crop of canola, which is now in full flower, ...](/web/20160917040623im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/h/0/x/r/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grh8fe.png/1473924664733.jpg)
"It looks like a patchwork quilt," he says.
But today, Mr Falls is surveying his own spectacular looking canola crop from much closer to earth.
He is standing on a gentle hill on the edge of a paddock, his muddy boots just a couple of steps from a strand of barbed wire, as he assesses a 180 hectare sea of blooming, bright yellow canola.
"There's a theory, or a legend, that if you can't run through your crop, it's potentially a very good one," he says, as two low-flying birds skim just above the bobbing flowers.
If the size of the canola plants, brightness of the flowers, density of the crop and vigour of the plants are any guide, this season Mr Falls has grown a terrific one.
Shortly after acknowledging that he wouldn't be able to run through it, he slowly walks through it, carefully separating the plants to avoid damaging them – some of which brush his shoulders and ears – to create a path through the crop.
![Yellow fields of canola can be see from the air above the flooded Glenelg River earlier this week](/web/20160917040623im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/f/n/b/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grh8fe.png/1473924664733.jpg)
When he returns to the edge of the paddock his blue jeans carry yellow stains, and are sopping wet, thanks to all the wet leaves of the plants after recent rainfall.
"It looks magic," he says, after emerging from the yellow sea.
!['This is what keeps you going', says farmer Colin Falls of the 'magic' canola crop he's grown thanks to a wet autumn and ...](/web/20160917040623im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/h/1/2/o/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grh8fe.png/1473924664733.jpg)
"You farm for years like this, this is what keeps you going," he says.
"For the whole year, we have not been waiting for rain. And generally, as a farmer growing crops, you're waiting for rain at one time of the year," he says.
While Mr Falls' crops are well placed now, early this year he was facing a much different scenario on his farm at Dingee, north of Bendigo.
It was so dry earlier in the year that he was forced to wind back the size of his planned canola planting, by one-third, to a total of 400 hectares.
But then in autumn it started raining, and at reasonably regular intervals the rain returned.
"The next rain has come before we really need it, and that's rare," he says.
While his canola looks fantastic, Mr Falls says that in places it has suffered some flood damage, and "localised water-logging".
Another test will come over the next week, as floodwater from the south makes its way north.
A sign of things to come lies just over the road from the canola, where a vast sheet of water covers much of a neighbour's paddock.
If this season's harvest is a good one for Mr Falls, it would be a welcome relief after last year's.
"Last year was the worst ever. It was shocking, not production wise, financially," he says.