THEY rock up in caravans with a can-do attitude and a trailer full of hope.
Grey nomads are the unlikely heroes helping Hunter communities rebuild, after last year's July floods left farmers devastated and crops destroyed in their wake.
Beds, prams and rubbish bags littered Casanne Graham's vineyard at Fordwich, floodwaters ripped out posts and vines were suffocated in a thick blanket of grass.
When the floods hit on July 7, Mrs Graham was home alone - her husband was working in Pokolbin and couldn't get back.
"That night was a bit scary, because you're just watching the water come up," she said.
By morning their once lush vineyard had been torn apart.
"We were looking at a rubbish tip, there was grass hanging over every wire, it was just full," she said.
"We started one row at a time, stripping the grass vine by vine, wire by wire.
"We just got stuck into it."
Eight months later they haven't fully recovered, after fences were pulled down and downy mildew decimated 13 tonnes of verdelho.
That's where BlazeAid volunteers come in.
About 50 klicks away at Millfield in an old school classroom turned community hall, Central Coast retirees Max and Judy Robbins have set up camp.
As coordinators, it's their job to prioritise which properties volunteers head out to, organising food and donations from local community groups and finding farmers who need their help.
They'll be there for 12 weeks, and it's not just fences they fix - often it's hearts and smiles they mend.
"Mental health is a big thing, we're not counsellors but you do learn the ropes along the way to know when to say, 'mate, you might need help'," Mrs Robbins said.
"Farmers don't like to talk to their neighbours because they're usually in the same predicament, and they don't like to talk to their partners, their wife or husband.
"If we go out to a property and the wife brings us morning tea and we notice she's struggling, you go and sit under a tree and have a chat.
"There's a lot of that that goes on, it's not just building fences."
The couple's first brush with BlazeAid was during the Sir Ivan fire in 2017, where what started as a lightning strike in catastrophic conditions eventually tore through 55,000 hectares in the Warrambungle Shire.
They planned to go for eight days and ended up staying 11 weeks.
Now they've got about 13 camps under their belt and they run a tight ship.
In just a few days Mrs Robbins has turned the old classroom into BlazeAid HQ - she sits at a fold out table surrounded by reams of paperwork and two laptops.
There's a coffee and tea station, homemade cakes and slices to fuel the volunteers and a dozen fresh eggs dropped off by producer Leith Barber as thanks for the quick work BlazeAid made of his busted fences the day before.
With the skatepark just outside, Mrs Robbins has been winning the local kids over with ice blocks and cold water amid the sweltering summer heat.
"It takes a little bit of organisation, but once you've done it a couple of times you know what you need," Mrs Robbins said.
"I feel like Max and I are well-oiled now. We look after each other."
The organisation was born out of the ashes of the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.
Since then, thousands of volunteers have signed up to camps across Australia, rebuilding hundreds of kilometres of damaged fencing, removing fallen trees, built the odd chook shed or two and lifted spirits when it was needed most.
It's the characters that make the camps - like volunteers Dot Baker from Salamander Bay, who made it her personal mission to spruce up the bathrooms, helping cook and clean with her trademark cheeky grin.
Out at Ms Graham's vineyard, Jenny Goodson from Raworth and Susie Powell from Victoria rebuild fences under the watchful eye of Max.
Ms Powell has called in for a couple of weeks while on her travels, she's volunteered before and has come out of camps with lifelong friends.
"It can be quite emotional just to hear their stories, very emotional," she said.
"It's the resilience of people, they've had fires, floods and other personal health issues or things that have happened and they just keep going.
"So if we can take the load off them a bit and help out, that's important."
It's not just grey nomads that volunteer, during the COVID-19 pandemic backpackers who were stranded in Australia signed up to help farmers, have a bite to eat and hopefully secure a visa extension in the process.
It's the camaraderie that keeps a lot of people coming back and there's always a job to do to help out, Ms Powell said.
"When you have a team of people it makes it easier," she said.
"I think as a volunteer you get as much, if not more out of it than the farmer."
Each team turns up at a property early in the morning to avoid the day's heat, they'll stop for a quick bite of morning tea - usually a delicious cake or slice donated from a community member - in the shade of the trailer or a nearby tree.
When they return to camp, the competition is on.
Each team brags about how many kilometres of fencing they managed to put in - Mrs Robbins lets them rib each other, even when she has the real numbers.
"You get lots of personalities, we laugh and we banter, if we're fortunate enough to have a few teams go out we always have a bit of competition - and you encourage that because it's fun, it's got to be fun," Mrs Robbins said.
"Everyone is tired but you have to have that bit of banter, bit of laughter."
After a while on the job, camp coordinators usually grow something of a fan base or following, people who have loved being a part of their camps before will hit the road for the next one.
People come from Victoria, South Australia and the coast just because Max and Judy are the coordinators.
"We must be doing something right, because people come," Mrs Robbins said.
"Our kids think we're crazy and our friends think we're even crazier but we really do enjoy it.
"I guess it's just, both Max and I have lost really close friends and we're here and we're able."
Part of coordinating is deciding who needs help the most, properties with stock on a main road without a fence are the first priority and teams move down the list from there.
Camps can swell in numbers to more than 40 every night, but with school holidays and the heat - numbers have dwindled.
All the camps across Australia are in need of volunteers - the more people they have, the more fences they can fix.
The beauty of the model is that coordinators never really know who might rock up.
Kevin and Denise Norman heard about BlazeAid on the news and thought they'd "give it a bash", the Western Australian pair have been travelling since May, last year.
"It's good to help the communities out and when you're travelling it gets to the stage where you need something to do, people to talk to and something to talk about," Mrs Norman said.
"Something different than the people at the caravan park.
"We don't mind doing a bit to help out."
Already a number of farmers have signed up for help, some of their stories are harrowing.
Volunteers went out to a job where a man had been bitten by brown snakes two years ago and still hadn't fully recovered.
His wife was struggling to manage the property on her own and Mrs Robbins said the team were really moved by her story.
"That's what it's all about," she said.
"She was overwhelmed because her husband can barely walk, he's suffering, she was just overcome and the team were overcome by her emotion.
"It makes all the sweat and hard work worthwhile, that's why we do what we do, it's giving back."
At the end of the day, they're not just rebuilding fences, they're rebuilding lives.
For more information or to volunteer, contact Judy Robbins on 0405 194 647.
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