Dave Britton is resigned to the fact that he won't have his entrant fee for Summernats refunded. But he figured it was a small price to pay for supporting his local community.
Mr Britton had his Holden Torana coupe on the trailer and was heading north to Canberra via the Illawarra Highway for the annual street machine festival when he started to hear reports about the seriousness of the oncoming bushfire front heading for his local town of Cobargo.
"Summernats is something I look forward to every year but as we headed out the reports we were hearing about the fire situation were just getting worse," he said.
"So we parked up at the roadside near Moruya and had a family meeting, turned around and headed home."
It was December 30 and behind the Far South Coast towns of Wandella, Quaama and Cobargo, the Bagda Forest Fire was building a momentum that was to soon destroy dozens of homes and take two lives.
"As we headed back home, we were stopped by a road block at Narooma," he said.
"I had the dog and cat back at home and had arranged for my mother-in-law to mind them while we were away. But she couldn't get in either, so we were stuck."
He said he felt completely powerless to help as the firestorm swept through his community. For 36 hours, all he could do was wait and hope.
"In the end, we snuck back into town via the national park road," he said.
"It was probably not the right thing to do but we had all the right gear in case we got into strife."
READ MORE:
-
How Cobargo pulled together after a firestorm on two fronts
-
Friday looms as next potential flashpoint in bushfire crisis
-
NSW bushfires 'may impact' ACT warns Emergency Services Agency
After checking on his house and pets - "I lost a shed and the cat had singed feet but we were otherwise OK" - he unloaded the Torana off the trailer and got to work.
"The big thing was that people were bringing their horses down to the Cobargo relief centre at the showground but they had no feed for them," he said.
"There was also a lot of farms around which had lost all their hay stores and their pasture. They just had stock wandering the bare paddocks looking for feed.
"It was awful."
He asked around and found that Rockstarcows, a livestock breeding centre, had become a central point for people dropping off free feed for the area.
He loaded up the car trailer with big square bales and began the first of about 30 round trips, dropping off the feed wherever it was needed.
"People were so pleased to get something which could keep them going," he said.
"It felt good to be useful. I went around as many places as I could, dropping a bale off here and there."
He said he saw some heartbreaking sights on his many journeys.
"A lot of burnt sheep and cows out the back of Quaama and Wandella. It was pretty bad out there. Farmers are pretty tough blokes but there were a fair few who were pretty shattered," he said.
"They shook my hand and some told me their stories. It would break your heart to hear them. But this community will bounce back, I know it will."
The precautionary evacuation of about 100 horses from the Moruya Racecourse has created its own added feed demand in the area.
Graeme Harvgraves, who runs Harrisons Horse Pet and Rural in Moruya, was behind the wheel of his semi-trailer heading for Cowra on Wednesday to freight 500 bales of hay back to the coast.
The emergency hay shipment has been funded by Racing NSW.
