Rural Aid Farm Recovery Event in Dalveen, Qld

Manning River Times

Transcript

00:00This week Rural Aid's Farm Recovery Week here in the Greiner Belt working on seven properties in

00:15the Delveen region. We've got the team of 32 volunteers spread across those properties.

00:19Properties that were impacted by the bushfires back in October last year and at the time also

00:26experiencing some really challenging drought-like conditions so it's great to

00:30be here doing the work that we're doing. I'm Brian Wilson I live here at Delveen

00:35on the top of the hill here and I run a small fruit tree nursery that specialised

00:41just in fruit trees and this year just passed in 31st of October we had a fire

00:47go through and that burnt out the entire nursery down the back and that was that.

00:52I've never had experienced a fire coming from my house before we could see it you

00:59know out in the west there and great big plumes of smoke and we knew it was coming

01:04and my husband went off with the brigade and I stayed but because it was mowed

01:09around the front of my shed and we had a creek around the back we thought we

01:13should be okay but then when that fire jumped the highway and started coming

01:17with a massive wall of flame and I heard a neighbour's house get burnt we heard the

01:22gas cylinders exploding and we knew it was pretty serious.

01:26There were moments in the heat of Brian Wilson's battle when he feared he'd made the wrong move to stay.

01:32Burnt all the infrastructure pipes water pipes tanks machinery tractors cars you

01:39name it burnt most of my stuff left probably five percent of the nursery it's

01:44cost me a fortune literally a fortune oh after the fire I lost a lot of sheep

01:51because fencing has gone everywhere the electric fence stopped working and that

01:55wind the wind in the fire just tore the floodgate to pieces and the dogs came in

02:00and killed a lot of sheep it's done a lot of damage I had made a decision to give

02:07up because I can't I can't rebuild this too much didn't I really I knew I

02:11couldn't do it on my own it's just just too many man hours to fix because it took

02:1515 years to set up so you're not going to set that up in two or three months to

02:19get ready for a season. Rural Aid rang me to see if there are any little jobs and I

02:24said certainly are I want to fix that floodgate and then the back corner of my

02:30cattle yards got burnt out in the fire so they're doing that and done that

02:34already which is wonderful. I think Rural Aid have given me a lot of help

02:39because I wouldn't be able to put sheep here until that floodgates fixed and now

02:45I can and yeah that my yards weren't going to be able to be used for a while and

02:49now they've just been really big help to me.

02:53So Rural Aid turned up and have brought a team, an army of people and hundreds of

03:01hours of work have been done fixing irrigation, burying pipes, all sorts of jobs and this

03:07week's been amazing how much work we've got through. So many different tasks all

03:12done finished. I couldn't have done it there's no way it would take me at least five

03:16years to do what we've done here. I'm so grateful for the help because it's it's

03:23pushed me forward so I can do the things that I was going to give up so I'm

03:28getting there. Rural Aid made it possible to get there a lot faster.

03:32This past week has been a really valuable one for the farming families we've been

03:38supporting here in the the Granite Belt around the Delveen region and we've

03:42always talked about it being a hand up absolutely it's a hand up it's not a

03:46handout but we know it means so much.

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