After spending Friday and Saturday fighting the state’s devastating bushfires, Victorian farmer Neil Tubb turned his Longwood property into a makeshift food distribution centre for livestock that had survived the blaze.
On Monday, stacks of hay were piled around the dry, dusty farm. Spray-painted signs show where generous locals can drop off or pick up supplies to take to farmers in need. And inside a large shed, a row of women – including Tubb’s daughter, Sarah – coordinate donations on spreadsheets, passing around a tray of sliced watermelon.
“The adrenaline is still flowing for 95% of us,” says Tubb, 70, whose property has been in his family for five generations. “If we were doing 16 hour days or 18 hour days at our normal work, we’d be legless by now.”
People across Victoria have been left reeling by bushfires which swept across parts of the state, leaving one person dead, hundreds of homes and structures lost, thousands of hectares burned and entire towns evacuated. On Monday, 12 large fires were still burning across the state.
But the fires have also killed thousands of animals. On Monday, the Victorian Farmers Federation told the ABC more than 15,000 livestock had died – and that the number was expected to grow. Some animals that have survived have been injured so badly they will need to be euthanised – others are now starving as their food supplies have been burned.
Tubb – a Country Fire Authority volunteer who fought the black Saturday fires in 2009, and the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983 – says he has no idea how many animals in the Longwood area have died so far.
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“Personally, I know a young bloke … who manages a very big property, not far from here. I know he’s shot 900 sheep,” Tubb says.
“There is going to be some suffering, but you can just do your best and do it as quick as you possibly can.”
Tubb says more than $200,000 worth of hay has been donated in less than two days. It’s coming “from everywhere” – including over the NSW border and as far away as Gippsland – as people answer calls on social media for help and word spreads.
“We had a fellow with an old Toyota ute and a handled trailer with small square bales, chocker block, and a mate with a truck, chocker block, who turned up here yesterday afternoon, and they had driven from Lardner Park in Gippsland,” he says.
“People just want to help.”
Annabelle Cleeland, the local MP for Euroa, says road closures had been the biggest obstruction to starting the recovery.
“There should be those resources right now, where there’s recovery commenced,” she says. “Get it going. Let’s not delay the suffering of humans and animals any further.”
Cleeland, who was helping at the hay depot on Monday accompanied by her three young children, says her family had “lost everything” on their property except their house but even that was not habitable.
“My husband is having to euthanise 1,000 livestock himself,” she says. “And our story is everyone’s story.”
Cleeland says people had opened their homes to people who needed a place to stay, including her own family and many volunteers hadn’t had a break because they’d gone straight “off the fire truck and on to the hay truck”.
“It’s constant, but this is why we survive,” she says. “This is why we can rebuild, and this is why we live here – because we love our community despite all of the risks.”
Tubb says the community prided itself on being “really close-knit”.
“It’s come to its fore again here,” Tubb says.
“It sort of brings everybody together this sort of thing.
“And a lot of the people on the other side of the highway to here – friends and local community – have lost everything.”
