Requests for assistance mounting in Aussie Helpers office.
Sally Cripps
@sallyQCL
25 Jan 2018, 8 a.m.
The need to keep feeding weaners such as this one at Barcaldine have been behind the requests for help overwhelming the Aussie Helpers hotline. Photo supplied.
It’s not only drought-stricken Cunnamulla that will be feeling the helping hand of fellow Aussies reaching out with a hay drive on Australia Day – rural charity, Aussie Helpers, is preparing for a hay relief effort in the state’s central west.
Centred around Barcaldine but expected to encompass Blackall and Isisford areas at later dates, the first of 10 road trains carrying sweet irrigated Rhodes Grass hay from Casino in NSW will be pulling in today.
Aussie Helpers founder, Brian Egan, said the charity had put aside $100,00 to assist struggling farming families with stock feed and other goods.
Aussie Helpers volunteers were already visiting stations and arranging assistance for families who were at their wits’ end trying to keep their breeders alive.
Brian said people on the land just needed to know that someone cared about their predicament.
“A whole team of us will be calling in on stations and finding out what the need is,” he said. “We’ve got a good bush telegraph that lets us know who’s in trouble.”
Brian also said they were responding to “phone call after phone call” for help that had ramped up in recent months.
“We’ve distributed more hay round Charleville and done some at Torrens Creek – pretty much everywhere is in trouble at the moment,” he said.
The Burrumbuttock Hay Runners will have a convoy of 150 trucks unloading at Cunnamulla on Australia Day in another of their own massive drought relief efforts.