Supporters from interstate and across SA have come together to support Mid North graziers, bringing grain, hay and straw.
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00:00 It was all hands on deck for Mid North farmers surrounding Laura and Gladstone to get 23
00:07 mixed loads of straw and hay and grain to Ororoo graziers experiencing dry conditions.
00:14 As you can see in the footage here, local trucking companies and farmers rallied behind
00:19 them carting loads coordinated to 20 separate farms to see them through the next couple
00:25 of months.
00:27 Gladstone local David Humphress coordinated the southern end of the voyage while Ororoo
00:33 farmer Grant Chapman organised the northern drop.
00:38 We've got Trevor Gump from Malawi which is west of Ororoo and Jim Perrett from New South
00:50 Wales.
00:51 We're just running Merino sheep at the moment, we're in farming and we're north of what they
01:00 call Gordas line and we're finding it's getting a little bit more difficult with the rainfall
01:05 and the seasons and that so we've cut back and just running Merino sheep now.
01:12 The feed situation, we were sort of surviving on such an excellent spring last year.
01:18 It added a good ground cover and the sheep were holding up not too bad which was quite
01:24 pleasing until the crisis came along and there wasn't a real market for them.
01:29 But now we've had these recent storms that have gone through, we've actually explored
01:35 a bit of rain, we've got around an inch, 25 mils and now that rain this time of the year
01:42 sort of sets the breakdown process of the dry feed and we're finding that now being
01:47 so only December that summer's going to be a long period.
01:54 Lost your bulk dry.
01:55 Yeah we lost our bulk dry because it's going to break down quick and this last rain's shocked
02:02 stuff so we'll need follow up to keep it going.
02:05 Speargrass and those sort of things will survive but the softer species will suffer if we get
02:12 a heat wave.
02:13 This type of thing's handy.
02:16 Well if it didn't receive hay we would have had fingers crossed that markets are going
02:21 to get better and we're going to have to put stock on.
02:24 We haven't got old ewes at the moment so we'd be selling stock that we'd like to keep and
02:30 of course as usual why the lambs weren't that keen to take, huge numbers so we've still
02:35 got a few lambs there.
02:38 So hopefully the prices which have just improved a little bit at the end of the new year we
02:43 can get our numbers down and from there once this lot's used up well yeah we'll have to
02:51 purchase I suppose but fortunate enough they've had pretty good hay year so there's a bit
02:58 of stock around so hopefully it's still there.
03:01 We did a lot of work the last two days mixing and matching guys brought straw in and some
03:05 brought hay in and we had doing undoing straps, doing up straps, undoing straps, doing up
03:11 straps and I've just had major neck surgery so I'm not allowed to touch straps at the
03:15 moment.
03:16 Alrighty hey, well done for you mate.
03:19 Well Jim, whereabouts are you from Jim, tell us a bit about how you got involved.
03:23 I'm involved in two fodder charities on the east coast or the eastern side of Australia,
03:28 one being Need for Feed which is a Lion's Base project out of Victoria and the other
03:32 one's a new group we started up not long ago called Fodder Response Australia, I'm actually
03:36 the secretary for them and we do fodder relief about every six weeks we go somewhere, there's
03:45 a band of anywhere between 11 to 25 trucks will go somewhere every six weeks to try and
03:51 help people out.
03:52 The last couple of years we've been bombarded with the north coast floods, only last weekend
03:58 I didn't go because I'm not up to drive my truck that far, that's why I've borrowed a
04:01 truck this time, I'm in a flash auto this trip so I didn't have to hurt my neck so much.
04:07 They went up to Tenerfield and Stanthorpe in Queensland where the fires had been and
04:12 I think they had 13 trucks went on that run and we've done western Queensland, Victorian
04:20 floods, Gippsland floods, the Wimmera drought, so wherever there's a need and in this big
04:25 beautiful brown land that we have somewhere across that 4000km there's always somewhere
04:30 that's got a problem so there's never any issue of trying to find somewhere that you
04:34 need to go and help.
04:35 Food was provided by the Northern and York Landscape Board before trucks headed off.
04:40 Victorian.
04:41 Victorian.
04:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]