Six months since floods ravaged parts of north-east New South Wales, Victorian sheep and crop farmer Glen McMennemin is part of a group effort to transport donated emergency feed across the border to recovering farming communities.
It’s the kind of help Mr McMennemin would have been grateful to receive when his property at Undera, on the Goulburn River, near Shepparton, bore the strain of drought in the past.
His farm hit a low point in 2018.
“Back then I was running a full sheep farm operation with no cropping,” he said.
“And obviously we didn’t have the produce come through from Mother Nature.”
Mr McMennemin had to buy a lot of hay which “really, really hurt” financially, and then there was the emotional toll of having to put down starving sheep.
He said the impact on his mental health and family was a “snowball effect”.
“I came through the drought and realised how hard it is for people, and experienced it myself,” he said.
Now Mr McMennemin’s crops produce more feed than he needs, and he’s happy to share it with those doing it tough.
“If I can help other farmers in need — and I can, I have spare hay — everyone’s a winner.”
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Loads of generosity
Aussie Hay Runners founder Linda Widdup decided to organise a convoy of donated feed to the Northern Rivers and Clarence Valley after the two flood events in early 2022.
When Ms Widdup travelled north with the first hay run in July she witnessed the tragedy first-hand.
“I saw just mud, I saw animals in terrible condition, I saw farmers that are just broken,” she said.
“They’re selling their stock off — what they can sell off — but then what’s left they’re trying to keep alive and it’s awful, their stories of just losing everything.
“It’s just everyone up there, they’re really suffering terribly.”
While organising the first delivery of 32 truckloads, Ms Widdup wasn’t planning on making a second.
But after visiting the recovery zone she had a change of heart.
She said flood-affected farmers would need support for the next two or three years.
The next Aussie Hay Runners delivery is set for September, and has been bolstered by a groundswell of support from the Goulburn Valley.
“I’ve had four loads coming out from Undera, there’s about half a dozen from Katamatite, oat and hay coming out of Shepparton,” Ms Widdup said.
“A lovely gentleman out at Katunga has donated a load of vetch hay, and there’s also some coming out of Girgarre.”
It’s important to the Aussie Hay Runners founder that the donations go to hobby farmers and primary producers alike.
“There’s the mums and dads that’ve got a few cattle out in the paddock with 10 sheep and the kid’s pet horse, and there’s the grandparents who’ve got grandkids’ horses out on their properties and the donkeys and what have you,” Ms Widdup said.
“Nobody has offered them any support.
“I had people ringing me saying, ‘Can we please have just one bale of hay because no one will help us’.
“I just thought ‘This is wrong’.”
Truckies see ‘ecstatic’ response
Truck drivers from Wunghyu, Invergorden, Katamatite, and Numurkah will donate their services to transport the feed.
24-7 Trucks owner and driver Paulsen Voigt was part of the first convoy in July.
He said the farmers he met at the distribution point were “ecstatic” to “feel some relief, some support”.
Mr Voigt watched his parents struggle to turn a profit on their farm during past droughts and he empathised with flood-affected farmers across the border.
“I was hearing about cows dying with mud in their guts … that’s no fun for anyone,” he said.
“Any farming enterprise, you don’t need to go to the pokies as far as I’m concerned … you’re held to account by whatever the weather wants to do to you.
“You can do everything right and it turns to st.”
Mr Voigt didn’t hesitate to offer help transporting the next delivery and will donate hay from his shed as well.
“We’re definitely feeling like we’re appreciated, and for transport that is very rare,” he said.
“If you get a pat on the back for anything in what we do it’s pretty cool, but it’s not why we do it.
“It’s because you see the people, how much they need it up there.”