AgVic Talk Season 7

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Drew Radford:

The effects of a disaster are felt long after the event. For some, it may go on for months. For others, it can be years. The difference perhaps these days is support stays around and is available for the long haul.

G'day, I'm Drew. Radford and organisations are making this core business with ongoing positions like Ag Recovery Manager and Flood Recovery Manager. We're going to delve into how these roles have been helping farmers and communities recover. Sally Cunningham is Flood Recovery Manager with the National Centre for Farmer Health, and she joins me for this After the Flood podcast. Sally, thanks for your time.

Sally Cunningham:

Good to be with you today, Drew.

Drew Radford:

Sally, you've been around farming pretty much all your professional life, haven't you?

Sally Cunningham:

I have, in several different states in Australia, most particularly Victoria through Landcare and farm advisory work with AgVic, etc. But also overseas working with subsistence farmers in marginal country, in arid zones of Africa, so a bit of diversity there. I love working with farmers. I love the sense of learning together as we explore better ways of doing the things that they need to do.

Drew Radford:

Learning together, your background's soil science, isn't it?

Sally Cunningham:

I've sort of jumped from talking about soil health to talking about farmer health. I guess what I really love to do is to see farmers and the land that they farm and their farming enterprises thrive, but I guess there's a few insights you gain along the way in terms of how people think and how they approach their farming and how they survive difficult times in the journey. So all of that's brought me to where I am today.

Drew Radford:

You phrase that very well, particularly the point about how they survive difficult times in their journey. You now work for the National Centre for Farmer Health. How do they and you help in that particular space?

Sally Cunningham:

Well, the focus that I've had during the time that I've worked here has really been to try and get farmers really thinking about how they manage uncertainty in farming and what are the risks to their mental health, if you like, as they go about farming, and what do they need to have in their toolbox to make them more resilient and more able to take the challenges that just keep coming at them through farming, whether they're technical challenges or dealing with their own emotional response to difficult things. It's been all about trying to protect mental health and build resilience.

Drew Radford:

With the 2022 floods, what have you seen in terms of the emotional impact on farmers and rural communities?

Sally Cunningham:

Look, I think it's been really huge and I think the important thing to remember is floods didn't just sort of come out of nowhere. If we think about what's happened in the preceding five years in farming, some of the flood affected communities have had drought, COVID, and then some of them had fires and then floods. One issue has compounded another. So the impact of the floods has really varied. Whether it was the river came up and flooded the place and the water didn't get away for months or whether it was, we just had a really difficult harvest period. It was late. We had a long period of uncertainty where we didn't know we were going to even get any harvest. So long periods of really high workload, a lot of fatigue as that played out over a few months, and the financial uncertainty just really getting to people.

So people experience it in different ways and people express their struggle in different ways too. It doesn't sort of play out immediately. So in the immediate crisis, people just kick into overdrive and you just keep working. But over time you sort of see the impact of stress. So people get grumpier or they behave in different ways that aren't characteristics or their relationships all get pretty frayed around the edges and their own ability to solve problems that they would normally be able to cope with is diminished and they're just tired. Energy levels go down and yet the workloads still high. So like a mental health impact of the flood, it's not apparent for months and months and it'll probably take several years to play out for some people. Some people have a very quick bounce back and some people it's a long time before the impact starts to play out and then they recover.

Drew Radford:

It's a really salient point, Sally, I interviewed someone recently and she was saying we were just so flat out working for months. It wasn't really until six months later I had the opportunity to go, "Hang on, I've gone through something pretty significant."

Sally Cunningham:

I think part of the battle really is being smart enough to know when you need help and then just having the courage to ask for it. I think that's a really big step for some people, and it has to do with how you see yourself as a farmer or as a business. We always taking the standpoint of, "We're really tough, we can get through this." Or are we saying, "This is really tough, actually we're going to need to look for some help. Who is on our support team that we can ask for help?"

Drew Radford:

Well, in terms of that help, Sally, have the mental health support services available to farmers who've experienced flooding been effective in addressing farmer wellbeing?

Sally Cunningham:

I think there's been a real uptick in services that have been available to farmers, even right down to some of the smaller farming communities. Although people can't always get quick access through their GPs to say mental health services, they can often get access to other services who are in their towns because of the floods. There's been a lot on offer in different sorts of ways, and also we are seeing there's more on offer in terms of online services or mixed delivery. So if some people they want to talk, they're happy to do that over the phone or over a Zoom call because that offers them a bit more privacy and that's often one of the barriers to people seeking help.

So we've seen services being pretty well-used, but I don't think that means that we've got everybody who probably needs a bit of help and when we are thinking about the whole spectrum of issues that might surface after a flood and all the issues that go with that in farming, people draw strength from each other. So some of the things that have been happening is community get-togethers. People just have a sense of, "We are not in this on our own. Everybody else is going through the same thing," and talking with each other is really helpful and getting good advice from your agronomist or your finance people or rural financial counselling or whoever it is, all of that builds strength and capacity at a time when people might be struggling.

Drew Radford:

Sally, you mentioned that communities getting together under the banner of building farm spirit, there's been a number of events held throughout Victoria. How many have there been held? And I'm guessing they're producing the results you're talking about.

Sally Cunningham:

So what we decided was not to organise events ourselves, but to sponsor community-run events. We've done that for 60 different events. That's in lots of locations and some of them are tiny towns because we really wanted to capture the farmers and the farm workers and their families, but we recognise that communities are best at designing their own events and they just had to have a bit of a focus on mental health in some way, in a way that the discussion was relevant to farmers. So really we just wanted them to leave thinking about, "How do I, as a farmer going through a difficult year, protect myself so that I'm okay to keep doing the job that I know and love, how do I get the strength that I need from those in my community and those on my team?" We just provoked a lot of questions and discussion really, and the feedback from communities was amazing. So it just seems that there's more willingness to have these discussions than say 5, 10 years ago.

Drew Radford:

Why do you think that is, Sally?

Sally Cunningham:

As a community, we are more ready to talk about our own strengths and weaknesses and struggles than we used to be. We see this coming through in the younger generation. They're a bit more articulate about mental health and looking for help and knowing how to help each other as mates, but I reckon COVID played into this a bit too because there was just so much more talk about resilience and mental health during COVID. I think that might've opened a few doors and I think it's helped us to prioritise self-care and how do we maintain a positive attitude when things are difficult, how do we nurture and look after our working relationships and our family relationships? I think there's more open discussion there now.

Drew Radford:

Which is a fantastic thing in terms of helping build resilient and healthy communities. I just want to circle back, Sally. You mentioned earlier about barrier in terms of people accessing some of these services, and you talked about the anonymity of being able to call into some of these services. Are there other barriers that need to be overcome or are these community events and these anonymous services really helping address most of those?

Sally Cunningham:

Look, I think the community events play a small role in that they help people to draw strength and insight and knowledge from those in their circle, in their immediate community, and that might be the only level at which they need a bit of help. But I think a lot of people have difficulty recognising their own need for help and then difficulty articulating what it is that's going on in their head. So having some language to explain things is often the barrier. When I talk to say rural aid people, they say, people come and say that, "Look, I'm just not right and I don't know what it is," but it takes a bit of teasing out to get it any further than that.

I think sometimes privacy is a barrier in small rural communities. You don't want to expose yourself as being that person who needs help actually, there should be no shame or stigma in that, and sometimes the barrier is that people can't find the services they need easily. If they need more than just a chat with a mate who's going to stick with them through a bumpy time. If they actually need access to professional services, they've got to know where to find those services.

Drew Radford:

Sally, there was 60 of those events throughout the state following the floods. What about beyond there? What long-term strategies or programs are in place to promote mental resilience and well-being of farmers who've experienced the traumatic effects of flooding?

Sally Cunningham:

Well, I think what we've learned from other disasters, drought, and bushfire is really that there is a need for long-term provision of services. You can't just walk away after a year, 18 months and say, "That's done. Flood recovery, tick." You have to leave the door open for access to really good services because it may take a while for this to play out in people's lives and for them to really seek some help as they deal with their own struggles or as they deal with how the impacts of the flood play out in their own business. So I think we need to have a commitment to a really sustained availability of services because it's not a quick fix

and we need to make sure that we are not leaving people. So I see a lot of really proactive things happening in producer groups and in farming communities looking for really good advice and getting together to discuss these things. So there's some group problem solving, but also just really wanting to see farmers and their communities continue to build those skills of resilience. So they're looking out for each other and they're good at working together and they're not left feeling like they're alone to struggle with those issues.

Drew Radford:

That's Sally Cunningham, Flood Recovery Manager with the National Centre for Farmer Health. Also helping primary producers and their communities is Brad Costin. He used to be an Industry Liaison Officer for Agriculture Victoria, but the 2022 floods changed that. He became and still is the Ag Recovery Manager.

Brad Costin:

Well, the Ag Recovery Manager role, I suppose, is to manage our AgVic resources we have in our flood recovery program. So I've got access to a team of people to help sort of support livestock farmers, meat, and wool farmers in their recovery efforts. So it's about helping manage the recovery program for the Hume area in Northeast Victoria and use our skilled staff to help make recovery easier for farmers.

Drew Radford:

So how does that actually work?

Brad Costin:

Probably one of the first things we did was that we supported farmers by running a series of drop-in centres after the flood. So this was done in strong collaboration with the farming community, so several Landcare networks which operate in the northeast as well as local government. So we'd have these drop-in centres where, and we'd put the word out straight after the flood, and we would have sort of everyone under the tent sort of in a one-stop shop where farmers could access technical information on agriculture and flood recovery there, but also other support services like Rural Financial Counsellors and AgBiz Assist and the private sector service providers like seed companies. That was probably one of the first things we did was to establish those sort of drop-in, sort of recovery centres early on in the piece, Drew.

Drew Radford:

That's a broad range of things that you're really trying to get out there and help primary producers with. Was there anything that really stood out that they were really keen to engage with?

Brad Costin:

Probably what was popular in those recovery sessions. We brought along AgVic district vets or animal health and welfare staff, and they were really popular because I mean of concern is for livestock producers is the health of their animals, not just at the flood, but going forward, just you've got to remember, paddocks were still wet. There was a lot of water lying around, and so animal health concerns were certainly on top of farmers' mind and causing them a lot of anxiety. Farmers love their animals, so vets and animal health and welfare staff were able to give out some good pointers is about what to look for, what things now and into the future for their livestock and what farmers would need to do to address any issues should have they arisen.

Drew Radford:

Brad, I would imagine that process would be very taxing and also rewarding at the same time. What surprised you most?

Brad Costin:

Look, anyone involved in helping support the community and farmers in natural disasters, taking on those recovery roles. It takes a lot out of you, I suppose. Emotionally, it's a big one for staff and volunteers in that sort of space. But I suppose in terms of rewarding, it's been able to meet needs of those farmers and point them in the right direction to better connect them with services or technical advice to just give them a bit more breathing space and just help them improve at least one thing in their day.

Drew Radford:

And Brad, I'm speaking to you more than a year after the floods occurred. You're still in the role, which means the recovery process is still ongoing?

Brad Costin:

Correct, Drew, and it is a long one because I suppose the difference and the thing that is really, I suppose surprised me is just we did have the floods in 2022, and then we have had subsequent rain events, which has caused subsequent flooding on floodplains and some farmers. So it wasn't like a, say a bushfire where you're burnt, and then the recovery trajectory's fairly well-known, whereas the floods, there was some repeated flooding. Notwithstanding that, it's still a long haul for farmers too because they can't get access onto paddocks to do some of the recovery work. So it is drawn out. It's not a quick and easy response and recovery journey for people.

Drew Radford:

Brad, as mentioned, the role's ongoing. What do you hope for farmers as we head into the future?

Brad Costin:

It's important for farmers just to understand that it might be a long recovery journey for them. So looking after their mental health, it can be a frustrating journey for many. So knowing that and just being kind to themselves, that it's not an easy fix overnight and you might even get repeated flooding.

Drew Radford:

While Brad Costin has a broad role as Ag Recovery Manager, many of his colleagues have also been closely involved in supporting farmers. People like Brett Davidson, he's been able to draw upon experience from supporting producers through other disasters.

Brett Davidson:

Well, I've been involved with lots of different emergency responses over the years, and you get a range of emotions like some people are fine during the flood or the event and then it might be months or even years later when that stress or something triggers them. Other people are quite stressed and devastated and they'll second-guess themselves on things they'd normally do as a matter of fact, and might ring you a bit more as part of a stress response, just wanting some reassurance for their own decisions. You do get some people that are quite devastated and need a lot more of a hand, but then you get the complete opposite.

Drew Radford:

I understand in one instance you had a partner of a farmer contact you concerned?

Brett Davidson:

Yes, they were concerned about their partner, changes in their behaviours. They just wanted someone to come up and have a chat and just talk through some of the things around farming. In a few of those instances, we had producers that didn't want to look at the damaged areas by themselves because they were sort of a bit worried about what they'd find, and quite often it wasn't as bad as what they thought because sometimes the water can get away and not cause a heap of damage. It might cause a lot of mess. I'm talking in an agricultural perspective, not a town and house perspective.

Drew Radford:

In that situation, you're asked to go and walk around somebody's property with them and for the first time, how do you help in that regard?

Brett Davidson:

It's about listening and there's a conversation about lots of things. Agronomic, nutrition, it's talk about the issue, but you are there as a supporter as well, so that you're helping that person look and think about things and they've got someone there to talk to that can be a sounding board for their advice.

Drew Radford:

More than a year on from the floods, how are primary producers in your patch responding now?

Brett Davidson:

Majority are going pretty well. For the last flood, it was late spring, so for people on dryland, some of the repair didn't start until the next year. You've got to wait till the autumn break to get pastures going again. For irrigation people, they could put some summer crops in, but you're dealing with a fair bit of loss of other pastures as well, so it changes what you do. It puts physical and financial pressure on you. There is a physical and mental toll on producers. A good part of our job's, being able to help them out in those times of need.

Drew Radford:

Brett, from your experience of assisting through a number of disasters, I get the impression that people should really think about they're not alone when the worst does happen.

Brett Davidson:

No, that's dead right. Rural communities are great when there’s times of crisis, like for pitching in and helping each other out, and there is support there, but you need to look after yourself as well. So by just getting off the property for a few hours or getting involved with something different is usually a big relief and gives yourself a mental break and lets people look after themselves.

Drew Radford:

Brett Davidson from Agriculture Victoria you’ve have done a remarkable job of helping people through these disasters. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your insights with us on this AgVic Talk podcast.

Brett Davidson:

Thanks, Drew.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186. To access recovery and resilience support, programs, and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Centre for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season. For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Centre for Farmer Health website. This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer recovery and resilience.

Drew Radford:

The personal impact of a disaster like a flood can sometimes take a long time to be felt. Often, this is because people are in overdrive, frantically trying to recover. It can be many months later when there's a brief lull in the hard graft that the personal toll sinks in.

G’day. I'm Drew Radford, and this was the experience of Chloe Fox, a market gardener whose leasehold near Seymour was submerged by a couple of metres of water in a matter of hours. When it subsided, nothing was left. And because it was a leasehold, it meant her finance options were limited. So, Chloe and her team from Somerset Heritage Produce began frantically working, planting crops to raise the cash they desperately needed. It's a remarkable story of resilience and of community support. To find out more, Chloe joins us for this After the Flood podcast. Thanks for your time.

Chloe Fox:

Thank you.

Drew Radford:

Chloe, I want to find out about what you grow and what you produce, and it's different from your background because you're a fifth-generation farmer and not a farmer that grew up in Australia either. What's your background?

Chloe Fox:

So my family were dairy farmers in New Zealand. We milked in both the North Island and then moved to the South Island around the Canterbury region.

Drew Radford:

Growing up on a dairy farm, you get a good look at what really hard work's all about. So did you want to keep on farming after growing up around that?

Chloe Fox:

I love the lifestyle, the being on the land, the connection to what you eat, but no, I don't think the idea was for me to grow up to be a farmer, but dairy farming's very different to what I do now.

Drew Radford:

What are you doing now and where are you doing it?

Chloe Fox:

So I am a market gardener, so I grow a very diverse range of vegetables on about four acres in Seymour, on the Goulburn River.

Drew Radford:

Now four acres doesn't sound a lot, but you produce quite a large amount of produce each year.

Chloe Fox:

In small scale market gardening, four acres is actually quite a lot. You can grow vegetables very intensively and we grow a huge diversity so we're not just broad acre cropping or growing a monoculture. We're able to fit a lot of different vegetables and grow quite a lot of quantity.

Drew Radford:

And is it organic?

Chloe Fox:

So we are organic in practice. We haven't gone through the certification process. We generally deal directly with our customers, either in the farmer's market space or directly with restaurants. And for us the amount of paperwork and administration that goes into organic, frankly I'd just prefer to be farming. If we moved into more of the retail space or selling into supermarkets, that's where we would pursue the certification.

Drew Radford:

Yeah, I could imagine you've actually got a lot of paperwork as it is with a customer database like that anyway, dealing directly with people and there's just essentially you largely and your partner, is it?

Chloe Fox:

Yeah. So Cam, my partner helps out but also has another job off farm and isn't technically on the payroll and we have employees, but I do all of the administration side of the business as well as farming.

Drew Radford:

Chloe, that four acres though, you lease that I understand.

Chloe Fox:

I do. So the four acres is within a hobby vineyard property. It's just on the edge of town, right on the Goulburn. We lease land, that's really the only way I can access land at this point.

Drew Radford:

That's simpler. The cost to access farming, isn't it, in terms of having the capital to buy the land?

Chloe Fox:

And as everyone knows, the cost of farmland is absolutely through the roof and particularly with access to good water, which is essential in market gardening.

Drew Radford:

So what are you growing there?

Chloe Fox:

We grow more than 100 different crops over the year. We grow very seasonally. We focus on heritage and heirloom varieties of vegetables. We do a lot of leafy greens, root crops all through the year. We're just getting ready to plant 40 different varieties of tomatoes this year. We're really just driven by taste and producing really good quality vegetables.

Drew Radford:

How many years have you been there, Chloe?

Chloe Fox:

So I started actually working on this farm for somebody else in 2016 and in 2018 I bought the business and took over and it's changed a bit since then.

Drew Radford:

Chloe, you've been farming there for a number of years, and you’ve faced the biggest challenge you've ever faced in terms of farming and that was the flood. What happened?

Chloe Fox:

We woke up to huge amounts of rain. It had been raining a lot over that spring and we'd had a flood warning the day before. We were told it would likely get to minor flooding, which meant that the river would likely break into a dry gully that runs around our farm, but the farm itself would've been untouched. So the river broke into that gully and within a few hours it had started to creep onto the farm in one direction. The river broke its banks downstream. A few hours later the river broke in the upstream direction and we on the farm essentially became part of the river. It was just flowing through at a height above my head on the farm. We were on the property trying to salvage anything we could. Get everything up as high as possible. We had to evacuate our chickens. We had kayaks on the farm, which we were using to ferry the chickens out to get ourselves back and forth until it just got too dangerous to still be here and we had to evacuate the property.

Drew Radford:

Chloe, was there a history or a record of the river getting that high in that area?

Chloe Fox:

No. The last comparable flood I believe was in the early seventies, I think 1974, but it wasn't quite as high. Prior to that, perhaps 1890 would've been similar. From my reference, the last time I believe that dry gully had any water in it was 2010 maybe. It's not something you would believe that it could happen if you saw the way the farm is situated today. It was just at a scale that I'm not sure we could have done that much. There is no mitigating for a flood of that scale.

Drew Radford:

No, it certainly doesn't sound that way at all, Chloe. So, how long did it take to subside and what were you faced with afterwards?

Chloe Fox:

So it took about five days for the waters to recede from the farm. We still didn't have road access, so we were wadding in via a pedestrian walkway down by the river through about two foot of water for several weeks afterwards. So we were able to get onto the property on the Tuesday afterwards and just start making things safe. We had electricity to think of. We had severe building damage. Our cold room, which is a big 20 foot shipping container, had been picked up and dropped at a 40 degree angle and then moved about two metres. There were all sorts of safety hazards that we just had to get in and try to make safe.

Drew Radford:

It sounds like the whole thing was pretty much swept away.

Chloe Fox:

Yeah.

Drew Radford:

Did you look at that and go, do I want to continue or was that never in your mindset?

Chloe Fox:

No, it never was in my mindset. I joke that if I stopped farming I'd have to find a proper job, but I never considered not farming. I absolutely love what I do and I can't imagine not doing this. I also love this land. It's an incredible place to farm. We have very good soil, we have access to good water. I was determined to keep on doing this.

Drew Radford:

Well, it certainly sounds like you're determined because you are there now. But the difference between what you faced and getting there, are two vastly different things. So getting there, I understand you had a huge amount of community support.

Chloe Fox:

Yeah, we were incredibly fortunate. The reach out from our community, like the local Seymour community, our customers into Melbourne, just the general support of the Victorian community was incredible and so heartwarming. We received money through a GoFundMe. We received on the ground support, people coming to help us clean up. We had a working bee with more than 60 people showing up. So much different support.

Drew Radford:

That's quite phenomenal, really. I mean, we hear about support, but that's quite intense support from your local community, which must have meant that you could get back up and operational reasonably quickly or did it take time?

Chloe Fox:

We were actually surprised by how quickly we were able to get crops in the ground. I think we started planting again at the end of November, was the first lot of crops. Without all the support and just the amount of hands that came to help, I think we’d probably still today be, I don't know, cleaning up. It really just was astonishing to see how much work we could get done with that amount of people.

Drew Radford:

So Chloe, you hit the ground running with cleaning up, getting crops in, that's during your peak growing time. Did you actually have much time to reconcile what you'd been through or did that come later?

Chloe Fox:

It definitely came later. I think we ran on adrenaline for a good six months. Summer's always a pretty intense season in vegetable growing, so we just got cleaned up and ran headlong into a busy summer season and then by about May, we were starting to slow down a bit and it was quite hard to reset and to physically and mentally slow down at that point.

Drew Radford:

I suspect that might be a bit of an understatement, Chloe, to say the least. Obviously you had community support. How did you go though, in terms of accessing finance? Because you're a lease holder, does that make things different in terms of trying to navigate support post an event like that?

Chloe Fox:

It does. So to be honest, we wouldn't be here. We received about $35,000 through a GoFundMe that a friend set up, which I used to pay wages for months afterwards and fund some of the cleanup. We received some money as part of the flood relief scheme.

Drew Radford:

After the flood, you focused on some fairly high value intensive crops. Has that changed your mix now going forward or is that just that particular period?

Chloe Fox:

It has made me more conscious of just having always a few very good consistent cash crops in the ground that I know will drive production, like short season things that we can really turn around quite quickly. We still love the diversity of what we do and grow a huge variety of things, and some of them are definitely more for love than money. But yeah, we do always have those few crops now as a consistent source of income.

Drew Radford:

Looking ahead, you mentioned earlier, Chloe, that this thing was so high, levy bank wouldn't protect us. But is there in your thinking, planning for future climate variation, whether it's drier or wetter or anything along those lines following what you've been through?

Chloe Fox:

On a small scale, just the way we've set up the farm and rebuilt would hopefully survive a little bit better in the recurrence of a flood like that. We definitely are very aware of oncoming drought and always planning for that. Our model, we can adapt our different crops. We are very adaptable as a farm and I think that's one of our strengths.

Drew Radford:

And what about you? I mean, you hear heavy rain on the roof. How do you react to that those days?

Chloe Fox:

I used to love it so much and now it's a source of great anxiety. We had slightly worrying a lot of rains a few weeks ago, river started to creep quite high and we got to minor flood level again and fortunately it didn't go any higher than that, but it's definitely a very tense time.

Drew Radford:

Again, I think that's an understatement, Chloe. Chloe, you mentioned very conscious of drought potential and factoring that into your planning. Just briefly, how do you do that?

Chloe Fox:

We are very water conscious on the farm as it is, but some crops are thirstier than others. If we know we are going into a dry season, we'll prioritise growing crops that aren't so thirsty. We'll adapt our irrigation methods based on the conditions we can expect for the year. If the price of water that we can pump out of the river is going to rise to incredible heights, we'll definitely have to prioritise what we grow and we also do our best to insulate the ground and retain as much moisture as we can and grow in a very dense area. That's part of the beauty of having a small-scale operation.

Drew Radford:

Chloe, lastly, what advice would you offer to aspiring market gardeners or individuals looking to enter the field of sustainable food production based on your experiences?

Chloe Fox:

I would definitely say seek out and try to work for as many different farmers as you can. Really get that on the ground experience with a diversity of different farms. There's lots of different farmers out there and we all have different models. And when you go to set up your own farming operation, pick the bits that are going to work for you in your environmental context, in your social context, like who your market is and your local community, and also just what works for you in your lifestyle, like how do you want to work? Farming is more than just a job, it's definitely a lifestyle choice as well, and it has to be something that works for you as a whole of life choice.

Drew Radford:

Well, Chloe, it certainly sounds like you've made it work for you as a whole other lifestyle choice and especially considering what you've been through. All the best for the road ahead and thank you Chloe Fox from Somerset Heritage Produce for taking the time and sharing your story with us for this after the flood episode.

Chloe Fox:

Thank you very much, Drew. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186. To access recovery and resilience support, programs and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Centre for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season. For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Centre for Farmer Health website. This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.govau/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Drew Radford:

Being flooded once is one too many times, but for it to happen six times in one season is beyond comprehension for most. G'day, I'm Drew Radford, and unfortunately, this is what De Bortoli Wines dealt with in the 2022 floods at their Rutherglen Vineyards. To discuss this trying time and, importantly, how they responded to it, I'm joined for this After the Flood podcast by their Viticulturist and Operations Manager, Matthew Partridge. Matt, thanks for your time.

Matt Partridge:

Not a problem. Thanks, Drew.

Drew Radford:

Your role as viticulturist and operation manager, what does that actually have you doing on a daily basis?

Matt Partridge:

Drew, that sort of changes depending on the season. Normally, as a rule for me, I normally spend the morning wandering around out in the vineyard, looking at vines, talking to the guys who work for me, and make sure the operations we're completing at the time are being done correctly. And then in the afternoon, it's probably more back in the office and doing a bit more paperwork and those sorts of things. But it mainly depends on the season.

Drew Radford:

Well, it depends on the season, but the operation as well, because the business has quite a few wineries spread over what sort of area? Where are they?

Matt Partridge:

So for De Bortoli Wines, we have vineyards which are based in Griffith in Southern New South Wales. In the northeast of Victoria, we have our Rutherglen Vineyards, which I'm talking to you from at the moment. We have King Valley Vineyards, we have vineyards in Heathcote, and then we have a group of vineyards down the Yarra Valley.

Drew Radford:

So that's quite a spread. In terms of the 2022 floods, what was affected?

Matt Partridge:

We had disease issues across all vineyards. The major vineyards with flooding effects, you could say, were the King Valley Vineyard and the Rutherglen Vineyards.

Drew Radford:

So your vineyards?

Matt Partridge:

Yeah, yeah, my vineyards.

Drew Radford:

You drew the short straw on that one. So let's talk about what actually happened. Can you describe the flood impact in those vineyards?

Matt Partridge:

During that season, we ended up with about six separate flooding events on the Rutherglen Vineyards, and we had one major flooding event in the King Valley Vineyards. The King Valley Vineyard backs onto the King River, and the King River actually came up and inundated about 20 hectares worth of vines. For Rutherglen, we have a series of four vineyards, and as they moved down the catchment, the flooding got deeper and deeper. So six times up to a metre deep going through sections of our vineyard. So it's quite a substantial impact.

Drew Radford:

I reckon that's an understatement too. And six times, I mean, you wouldn't be running out and buying a lottery ticket after that. I mean, once is unlucky but six, wow.

Matt Partridge:

It was a tough season is the best way of putting it. So there's lots of other ways we could say about the last year, but we just say it's a tough year.

Drew Radford:

Okay. Well, disease, that seemed to be the main impact, particularly when you got hit six times. What sort of effect then? I am assuming it's difficult to manage if it's underwater.

Matt Partridge:

Very much so. And look, some of the other big issues we found was actually access issues. So it wasn't actually even accessed within the vineyard. It was actually getting staff to and from work. Murray Valley Highway was shut I think three or four times, which is our major access road in. So just getting people to work become a bit of a challenge and making sure they're safe getting to and from work is a pretty important thing. But yeah, disease became the big challenge for us going forward.

Drew Radford:

Okay. Well, two really important issues there. We'll focus on each one separately. So let's talk about the disease one, because six times, you're dealing with a weather stream that is, I assume, exacerbating this. You've got humidity and repeated rain events.

Matt Partridge:

Yeah. And it just kept coming. So, in a normal season for us here in Rutherglen, we would probably sprayed the vineyards seven times across the year. So that's my normal. I think we did it 14 times and 7 of those were once a week for seven weeks straight. We're trying to cover 200 hectares of vines. It's a good three days' worth of spraying and then you sort of get hit by rain again and you start the whole process again. So yeah, it just was around the clock, just keep going and watching weather conditions and trying to minimise the impacts that the disease could have on your vineyard.

Drew Radford:

And I imagine even just getting into the vineyard, as you alluded to, access with the highway for staff, but getting heavy equipment on to soft soil.

Matt Partridge:

Yeah. And probably one of the differences in a vineyard is that you're travelling over the same bit of ground over and over again. You can't sort of move your travel row easily. You can swap between rows. And we're lucky enough to have over the row machinery so we can sort of move a cross run. But once you're doing it once or twice and then you start to bog up the ground, well, it becomes a big issue. So you've got to be smart about how you deal with that sort of stuff. So you need to drop your tyre pressures and you need to make sure that the guys know where the wet patches in the vineyard are and we budget for that and plan around it, I suppose.

Drew Radford:

Being smart, you stated one of the simplest things to do, dropping air pressure. But sometimes the obvious isn't always obvious.

Matt Partridge:

No, no. So look, I mean, we had flood events in 2011 and that's one of the tricks we learned from that, so yeah. And, I mean, we've got some slight slopes. If you know that there's a slope there and there's a wet patch where you go downhill, you don't try and go uphill. All those little bits and pieces can make those minor bits of difference, because it's amazing how quickly you can damage machinery. And if you damage machinery, well, then you can't use it the next time round. And as I said, we were trying to do this 14 times in a season. And if you break it at spray three, well, then it doesn't really work for the rest of it.

Drew Radford:

And also trying to get the parts in as well. There's the other issue. But you mentioned cost, having to spray that many times over that area, that suddenly changes your profit margin for the season dramatically.

Matt Partridge:

Oh, very much so. You really need that support of your business and your accountants and everyone else to be sort of saying, yep, let's go for this. You're going to be putting in a lot more cash. The chemistry you start using, once you're in a really disease-prone year, it becomes more expensive. So everything starts to cost more. You spend more on diesel. You're spending more on labour, everything's going up. But the reality is, we wanted to get fruit off and we wanted to get the fruit off in the best possible condition, so that's what we had to do.

Drew Radford:

Is there a point you just say, look, we can't deal with this anymore, we can't treat it, we're going to stop spraying, or is that not an option because there's long-term implications for the vineyard?

Matt Partridge:

No, no. And look, I mean, there was plenty of people in the industry in the last 12 months who made that decision. They said, look, it's going to be too expensive for me to do it, or I haven't got my sprays on early enough and I haven't got the level of protection I need, or disease is starting to roll, it's actually better off for me just to put my hands up now, go to the beach, and spend a couple of months there and see what happens out the other end.

Drew Radford:

Yeah. A tough decision, though.

Matt Partridge:

Oh, very much. And look, I mean, we were luckily not in that position, but it's a heart-wrenching decision, especially like anyone in agriculture, you're addicted to it and you put your heart and your soul into it, to watch it all drop away from it is just soul-destroying.

Drew Radford:

Soul-destroying is again, another understatement, and I can only begin to imagine, and it's not my vineyard there. But in terms of the recovery, obviously you're dealing with the six flood events in Rutherglen and you're trying to spray there, but that starts to get behind you, what other things start to happen in that particular recovery process other than trying to firm up soggy patches in the vineyard so you can drive over them?

Matt Partridge:

One of the biggest things that we had as a recovery issue was we lost a lot of our internal roads. So the roads were actually just washed away because you had that much water going through them. So we needed to get them fixed so that we could pick and get back into the vineyard. So that took a fair bit of work, just getting hold of the right people and getting people that you knew would come and help you. You're obviously paying them, but you need to get hold of a good excavator driver and those sorts of things. So that's important. And I think one of the other main bits of recovery from my point of view is spending time with your staff, making them realise why we've done what we've done so they're really clear on it, and then making sure that they're getting some time away from the vineyard. Because they've been doing bloody long hours, so it's really important for them to spend time away and get away from us.

Drew Radford:

I was going to ask about the staff. You mentioned there, just even getting them in during the floods was problematic. So what were you managing on that front?

Matt Partridge:

If we had had a really big rain event overnight, I'd be up at sparrows and we'd go out and check the roads. And if we weren't going to get staff in, you make that call really early. You make sure that they understand. You're trying to look after them. So doing the little things are really important during those times when you've got people working long, long hours. We had a couple of single guys who were working for us, and we threw them a dinner for doing an extra long shift or something like that. So the little things really make a big difference to make sure getting them in and out is a safety issue. And really, if they can't get to work, well, they probably can't do any work there, so they're probably more happy to sit at home on those days.

Drew Radford:

You're painting a picture of we actually care about you. And I guess against the backdrop of that too, Matt, is some of your team would have been dealing with their own flood issues.

Matt Partridge:

Yeah, yeah. We've got plenty of staff who live locally, so it's all good and well to say, I need you here today to get this job done, but if they've got an issue going on, it's better for us to say, well, hold on, you fix that issue and you come back in two days time when your issue's fine and if you give them that and you make them have a sense of ownership and partnership within the business, I find that you get so much more out of them as well. So when you need them, you ring them on a Sunday afternoon and say, "Can you come in at 4:00 tomorrow morning?" They're more likely to say yes rather than, "No, no, my contract says I start at 7:30," sort of thing.

Drew Radford:

That's a process of give and take though, isn't it?

Matt Partridge:

Oh, very much.

Drew Radford:

You were describing that with the dinners, and I assume you've been doing that post-harvest and everything else as well. There's a bit in the ledger there.

Matt Partridge:

Yeah. Yeah, very much so. I mean, it's pretty simple to throw on a barbecue on a Friday afternoon. That really doesn't take much from you. And if you are cooking the barbecue as well from them, some of the dinners actually were you'd see them rolling in at 8:00 at night because my house is right near where they come to fuel up and things like that. Or you might walk over and say, "Have you got dinner for tonight?" "No, I haven't." "Well, walk back to the house and you grab some leftovers from our house," sort of thing. So it's making them realise that we care about them, is one of the keys, I think.

Drew Radford:

Yeah, well, it sounds particularly important when everyone's going through such a stressful time. So what do you reckon the key lessons you and your team have learned from these flood events?

Matt Partridge:

Go hard, go early, is one of those things for us, we learned. We learned that we needed to be able to pivot and change tact when we really require it. So if the flood was coming, well, some days you just dropped everything else and you focused on one thing. You need to be able to focus on the main job at hand and ignore the little bits and pieces and other things. They all get done in time and if they're not super important, don't worry about them. The other one that we've realised, and we did it a couple of years ago, investigate and work on any drainage you've got in your vineyards or your properties when it's dry. It sounds ridiculously simple, and you don't think about it until it's a wet year, but if you're thinking about it while it's dry, well, it's a lot easier to get that job done and if everything's packed away and done, then the drainage works properly and everyone's happy.

Drew Radford:

It's kind of flipping it on its head though, isn't it, really? Because we were talking about preparing for drought in good times.

Matt Partridge:

Yeah, that's right. And with flooding, you see so many properties and you look at them now and you think, why have they got that drain that way? And then you only notice it when it's wet. Well, you sort of take note of the areas on your own properties and you put it away in the bank for, okay, well as soon as that's dry, we need to fix that area. But a lot of the times, we focus too much on what's in front of us instead of thinking two, three months ahead or two years ahead or five years ahead. It's really hard.

Drew Radford:

Is that also the case in terms of your staff? I mean, getting hold of staff is difficult as it is. I imagine during that time and looking into the future, there's a lot of retraining going on and trying to manage workforce shortages.

Matt Partridge:

Yeah, very much so. I'm lucky in that we've been able to maintain our staffing here for a long period of time. So I've got one guy who's been with me for 25 years, one who's been with me 15, and I think the shortest length, I think it's about 6 years now. I reckon training your people and working and giving them ownership of their jobs is so, so important. And if you can hold onto those people and train them and spend time with them, then they'll repay you in spades. There's no question about that.

Drew Radford:

Do you reckon your approach to vineyard management has evolved as a result of these experiences?

Matt Partridge:

Yeah, very much so. A lot of it now is about planning. You do a lot more planning than I used to do. And probably the other thing that's evolved in my thought process is that, look, some years Mother Nature's going to give us a spanking. It doesn't matter what we do, and we've just got to accept it and roll on with it. We're not going to win every time, but we just need to try as hard as we can.

Drew Radford:

In terms of that spanking and a changing climate, are you putting in place processes to better deal with that? Is that what you're alluding to there?

Matt Partridge:

Yeah, yeah, very much so. And look, we're looking at new technologies far and wide to try and work out which ones we can embrace. There's lots of talk about drones for spraying and auto steer and all those other bits and pieces, and we need to get to that level. They're the sort of things we need to be doing. But some of the things in viticulture that we need to do going forward are we need to make our vineyards a bit more flexible.

So we're changing some of the varieties that we have on our vineyards to better cope with warmer climates going forward. And we're also putting in varieties that probably have a potential to be able to do more things. So they mightn’t just be a dry red, they might be able to be a sparkling wine, or they might be able to do a rose or something like that. So that gives that flexibility when you're working with your winemakers to say, well, hold on. What do you want this year? And okay, these products are selling well, we can bend it a bit easier. Because being a perennial crop, it's pretty hard to change it over. It's long timeframes. The wine industry is the long, slow industry is the best way of putting it.

Drew Radford:

Without a doubt. It takes a while to see what you've planted to come to fruition, to say the least. You're in an agriculture area. You've got croppers around you and all sorts of other farming practices going on around you. I imagine working with them, particularly in terms of mitigating the impacts of floods, is pretty important.

Matt Partridge:

This community where we live is actually a really good community, because the community isn't just focused on cropping or vineyards or cattle or something like that. So what you actually find is that a lot of the groups get together and they have these more community catch ups, so you don't actually feel like you're out there alone doing it when you're facing all these tasks by yourself. So there's lots of groups who get together and try and work with each other to try and achieve a better result.

Drew Radford:

And that's an important thing, I would imagine, to point out too, because you are part of a larger corporate entity, and I can imagine that sometimes people view that, oh, they're a corporation, whereas, no, no, I'm part of the community. It's a different approach.

Matt Partridge:

Yeah, that's right. And look, I mean, De Bortoli is a family-run business, and they talk about family being key. So we try to work within the community. So you don't want to stand out. You want to be part of the community, and you want to involve the community around you in the best way that you can.

Drew Radford:

Matt, we've covered a lot of ground here, but I'm just wondering, looking ahead, are there any other strategies that we haven't discussed that you're considering to ensure the long-term sustainability and success of the vineyards, particularly, I guess, in the context of a changing climate?

Matt Partridge:

Look, it seems strange in a flood podcast, but we're talking very much about reducing water usage. And a lot of that's, again, through technology getting better modelling and monitoring of what's going on. We'll actually reduce our water use and like everyone, you're trying to make the lowest impact you can on the ground around you. So if we can reduce our water use, we can reduce our diesel use, we can try and use our staff more efficiently, well then that's all a great thing. So there's lots of little pieces going together. And I don't think there is any big silver bullet for a lot of these things and it's like everything in agriculture, there's nothing simple in Australian agriculture. We've probably covered a lot of the big things already, so it's about trying to work within that last 5% and try and achieve some much better results.

Drew Radford:

Well, Matt, it certainly sounds like you are a bloke who's focused on that last 5% and looking over the horizon towards the future. But for now though, Matthew Partridge, viticulturist and operations manager with De Bortoli Wines. Thank you so much for taking the time and joining us for this After the Flood podcast.

Matt Partridge:

No worries. Thanks, Drew. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186. To access recovery and resilience support, programs, and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Centre for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season. For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Centre for Farmer Health website. This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Drew Radford:

Australian rural and regional communities are often talked about as being resilient, particularly during crises like fires and floods. Resilience though is something that needs to be fostered. G'day. I'm Drew Radford and someone who helps top up those resilience tanks is Claire Harrison from Bridgewater in North Central Victoria, an area that has been hit by floods twice in the last decade. To help build her community's resilience, Claire runs her local Active Farmers. To explain what that involves and how it helps, she joins us for this After the Flood podcast. Claire, thanks for your time.

Claire Harrison:

No worries. Thank you.

Drew Radford:

Claire, I understand there's probably not a lot of people from Bridgewater. How many and whereabouts is Bridgewater?

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, I was born here. There's about a population of about 300 people. It's in the middle of Victoria, about 30 minutes from Bendigo if you're heading towards Mildura.

Drew Radford:

Do you come from a farming background, Claire?

Claire Harrison:

No, I don't. My mum and dad actually ran the local butcher shop here just before I was born, so that's how my family ended up here, back in the day when towns had local butchers.

Drew Radford:

I understand you pretty much grew up seeing firsthand the effects of climate on the people who are part of your community.

Claire Harrison:

I have strong memories. My family was always very involved in local sporting clubs and we grew up in the drought. Most of our childhood was around drought time and you would see a lot of confusion around how are we going to water the ovals? How are we going to get our community sports happening? It won't be safe. We went to school with farming families and the stress that their parents carry and it was always lots to talk around the drought and how's it ever going to change. You physically saw the change on the landscape.

Drew Radford:

That would leave quite a lasting impression, to say the least. You talk a lot there about sport and the understanding of sport is so important in a community, not just bringing it together, but for everyone's health, I assume.

Claire Harrison:

Absolutely, it is. Really it's the lifeblood of communities. Your local football club or your cricket or golf or tennis, it's where you come together as family and you meet your friends. I mean, so many people around here met their husbands, I met my husband at the local footy club and it really provides that social outlet for everyone in the community and they are, so important.

Drew Radford:

Drought affected that from what you're describing. Then you've seen the other side of the coin with flood because you've had a recent flood, but it's the second time in 10 years.

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, absolutely. Our adult life has seen two major floods come through our community and the devastation that that causes, not just in the township but on farms of course. It's something quite shocking to see. It's more of an immediate impact as opposed to drought just rolls on and a flood comes through and leaves a giant mess. You see a different spectrum of climate impact.

Drew Radford:

You talk passionately about the importance of sport and you've also seen the worst happen to the community with these big climate events. I understand at a younger age you decided to do something about it by creating a thing called the Shearing Shed Sheilas.

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, we did. For many years me and my husband lived out on a friend's farm and everyone wanted to exercise. We don't have gyms in rural Victoria, so we had an old rundown shearing shed there. I would get them together once a week and we'd just do a fun workout. I'd studied a bit of fitness on the side, so we used to do that and it was great fun. Then I think we went off and did a couple of events like triathlons and whatnot in Melbourne, so that was great.

Drew Radford:

There's two things going on there. One, you talked very passionately earlier about the importance of sport and getting together in the community and then there's the health aspect. That seems to be what you were trying to do there, or have I got it wrong, with the Shearing Shed Sheilas?

Claire Harrison:

No, absolutely. I know our Shire specifically has some of the worst health stats in the state. If you live in rural regional Australia, you've got more of a chance of being overweight, having heart disease, contracting cancers and whatnot. It's something I'm really passionate about, changing the tide for our future generations and normalising exercise a little bit more outside those more traditional sports. We are seeing more of our traditional sporting clubs fade away and not be sustainable at the moment. Yeah, I'm very passionate about providing opportunities to do physical fitness in rural communities.

Drew Radford:

There's two things that are coming out from what you described there. You talk about with the reasonable knowledge the issues that are in the community from lack of fitness. You are approaching that from not only classes, we're going to get onto that a little bit more in a second, but also you've been studying health sciences.

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, I do. I really care about people's health. I mean it's the most valuable thing we can have and I'm really passionate about improving the health of rural Australians.

Drew Radford:

From the Shearing Shed Sheilas, you are now involved in I would argue another incarnation of that, but it's not just women though. What are you doing now?

Claire Harrison:

I work for a health not-for-profit called Active Farmers. We're a nationwide organisation that basically at the core we fund group fitness in rural communities. As I mentioned before, we don't have gyms in a lot of rural communities and often a personal training business isn't a sustainable business model, so that's where Active Farmer steps in. We make it viable for a trainer. We pay a trainer to take regular classes in about 60 communities across Australia.

Drew Radford:

60 communities, that's quite a few across Australia. What's a class look like and how often is it happening in your area and what sort of people are turning up?

Claire Harrison:

In Bridgewater here, I've been running classes for about six years, I think. Fundamentally our classes are designed to be for anyone of any fitness and to make anybody welcome so anyone could walk in the door. I do a variety of sessions. I do about three a week. My dad comes to classes and he's in his sixties, and I have 15 year olds that would come to the same class. It's more of a social catch up with a little bit of exercise thrown in. It's about improving our mental health through exercise.

Drew Radford:

That social aspect sounds really important. You said when you were younger, you had footy clubs and cricket clubs. Are those opportunities less now in your particular area and hence making what you do even more important?

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, within Bridgewater itself, our football and netball clubs are quite sustainable. They're not looking too bad. Our league as a whole is suffering. Our junior sport is suffering. You hope it hangs on or hope positive change happens there, but a lot of our summer sport has died off. Providing another opportunity for people to come together, once you hang up your footy boots or your knees are gone from netball, there's not a lot of opportunities until you maybe want to join the lawn bowls club. There's a big gap in opportunities to do regular fitness.

Drew Radford:

Clearly you're helping provide those opportunities, but I imagine that's been even more important post some of these climate instances that you've seen from drought through to a couple of floods. I mean, what have you seen in the community after those events and what do they need?

Claire Harrison:

After the flood in October, there's a lot of people stuck in their homes for five days, and I thought, oh, everyone's going to be so exhausted because everybody in the community was working hard to help clean up the mess. It came for the Monday and I'm like, there's no way anyone's wanting to do a class, but I got so many text messages saying, can we just do a class? We just want to do something normal. They came so exhausted, but they came because they knew that they could catch up with everyone and have a chat more so than the exercise. I think from that I saw how valuable it is. When we've lost people in our community and through class, people have come in together and helped connect after terrible things happen. I see a lot of value in that.

Drew Radford:

I imagine the importance of that too then Claire is being consistent that you're always there.

Claire Harrison:

Yes, it is. The reason I joined Active Farmers is I saw a segment on landline on our founder Ginny. Her message was, if our communities get one or two people a week that matters because those one or two people are so important and it might be the only thing that they get for the week. We're not numbers driven. We're there for our community. Once we start up, we like to try and service them for as long as possible and we always know harvest time numbers drop off or sowing numbers drop off, but the fact is that we're still there every week popping up with our class and we're an opportunity for connection.

Drew Radford:

We are an opportunity for connection. It's not just the classes too. I understand you go away and do events occasionally.

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, we do. We have some great events across Australia. We just recently had a run here in Bridgewater in May, which provided the community a chance to welcome people back to the region, which was lovely. We had lots of people travel from right across Victoria and New South Wales and to show off what we have here. It gave lots of local people a chance to train for something a little bit different. I take a crew up to Coleambally every year. We have Active Farmers games there, which are essentially an obstacle course with quite a farming theme, so that's a really fun, great event because you go and meet like-minded people.

Quite often a lot of the farmers will go up with us just to catch up with other farmers. They may not compete but they still come along. We have games also over in Torbay in WA. We have a few bike rides, charity bike rides to raise funds for our organisation. We get to do some amazing events in some amazing parts of Australia, which you mightn't normally go to.

Drew Radford:

It sounds like you offer so much, but central to all of this is resilience being a key aspect of Active Farmer's mission. What are some of the strategies and initiatives employed by the organisation to try and enhance resilience and mental health wellbeing in rural communities?

Claire Harrison:

I think the key there is that we're consistent. We're not a program that's come in for six weeks to tick a few boxes. We're there. We're always going to be there. We work really, really hard on a small budget to make sure once we're in a community we can provide a consistent service. Each community gets some funds to do some workshops, whether they be, they get a guest speaker in or they might want to do some mental health training. The key with Active Farmers is we're consistent, and the heart of what we do is the rural communities that we service when we're there for those people.

Drew Radford:

You mentioned the workshops there and those kind of activities sound really important. Is there a debriefing component that almost goes with those as well after some of the hardships you've been describing?

Claire Harrison:

We do encourage and we've trained a lot of our trainers in mental health first aid. They're best equipped to help the participants that are coming. Quite often they feel like an incidental counsellor because people will come to a class and they might have had a terrible day and they often stay around and unload all their worries on our trainers. We really make sure we support our trainers with that knowledge and that they know where to refer participants on if they feel like they might need some extra services. Our workshops are really varied and they depend on what the community wants. Here in Bridgewater we did an art therapy session. It might have been during COVID and it was just amazing. We've had a trainer take her crew out on a guided hike, so that nature-based therapy. We might have a mental health expert come into a community to chat. It's quite open and varied what trainers like to do in their communities with that little bit of extra funding and we have the ability to support them, which is great.

Drew Radford:

Claire, you and the organisation offer a great deal. Has anyone come in and had a look at the impact on the communities, done some research and tried to quantify that?

Claire Harrison:

Yes, we have. We've had some good quantitative data produced on what we do and the effects so we know what we're providing, the service is having really positive change in communities. We know because we continue to grow communities as word spreads. We have more and more people contacting us saying, how can we get Active Farmers in our community? We definitely know what we're doing is having positive change.

Drew Radford:

Farmers, they're often doing long hours, particularly after something like a flood and they're focused on work. How do you encourage individuals, particularly men, to prioritise their health and make time for community activities?

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, so you summarised that quite well. It is the male farmer, or the male in general is one of our hardest targets. The most important thing to realise is our classes are open to anyone in rural communities. Men are quite intimidated sometimes to come to a fitness class because they do work so hard and they just don't stop working. I'm married to a tradie and to get him to stop working it's near impossible. Our core message, and I steal this phrase off one of our trainers in WA, he often says to his community, if you didn't service your tractors what would happen? He said, you need to treat your body like you treat your machinery and service it regularly and give it an hour a week to ensure you are there in 10, 15 years time to jump into that tractor and to do the work that you need to do. Our message is take an hour for yourself and it's an investment in your own body and in your business.

Drew Radford:

Are you living proof of that? Because I would argue with children and trying to run this and the family plumbing business, how do you balance all of that?

Claire Harrison:

Yeah, I love my two hours I get on a Monday night to take classes. It's great. Look, I get a lot out of it as a trainer and I find it really hard to call my job. I have to take my kids sometimes, but that's okay because they see us exercising and I think that's a really positive thing for kids to see as well. You can go to class feeling heavy and you can leave feeling light and happy and just energised for the rest of the week. It does help. It helps a lot.

Drew Radford:

Was there any message you would like to say to people listening to this? What would you like to leave them thinking about and is there anything they can do to help?

Claire Harrison:

If you're in a little community and you think, wow, we could benefit from Active Farmers help, please reach out. We're here. No community is too small, I promise you. You'd be surprised what people are out there that might want to come and do classes for you.

Drew Radford:

Rural and regional communities, they're often thought of as being very resilient and capable. They can face adversity. It sounds like what you are providing is pretty important in terms of topping up the tank to deal with that.

Claire Harrison:

Absolutely, and it is so true. We are such resilient people and it's the same in every rural community, but we need to nourish that. Like you said, we need to fill our tanks and we need to put something back in. We're not like the Energiser Bunnies, so we do, we need to stop, we need to refuel and we can do that through regular exercise.

Drew Radford:

You and so many others like you across the country are helping out and performing such an important task in helping build and maintain the resilience of regional and rural communities. Claire Harrison from Active Farmers, thank you so much for joining us for this After the Flood podcast.

Claire Harrison:

Thank you so much for having us and giving me an opportunity to talk about Active Farmers.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186. To access recovery and resilience support, programs, and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Centre for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season. For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Centre for Farmer Health website.

This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Drew Radford:

How do you recover when your life's work is literally washed away overnight? G'day, I'm Drew Radford, and unfortunately, this is the reality for Central Victorian farmers, Brett Collins and Bianca Jones, following the 2022 floods.

Facing a seven-figure loss, many people would walk away, however, giving up is not in their DNA and they're rebuilding, and they're being helped along the way by some remarkable people and organisations. To find out how, Bianca joins me in the After the Flood studio. Thanks for your time.

Bianca Jones:

Thank you, Drew.

Drew Radford:

Bianca, you're a nurse by background, but you also seem to be a farmer as well. I'm a bit confused. How does this meet? Where do you farm?

Bianca Jones:

So we farm at Bridgewater North and Jarklin.

Drew Radford:

Right. So a couple of properties. And what do you run on those, Bianca?

Bianca Jones:

So mostly crops, but we also do lambs as well.

Drew Radford:

So take me back to the day of the flood. I get the impression this happened in a very big rush for where you were. I mean, people down the river system saw it coming for literally weeks, but it wasn't the case with you.

Bianca Jones:

No, it wasn't. It hit very fast. So the [Bureau of Meteorology] BOM let out a warning to say that there was flood warning for the Loddon River, which is what surrounds our Bridgewater farm and it would potentially be worse than the 2011 floods. I went to work that night, so I started at 10:00 and I think Brett called me at about 20 past 10:00 to say that BOM had sent off that alert and that he was off to the farm. So it was very quick.

Drew Radford:

So you left work and ran home, because you've got a couple of young kids.

Bianca Jones:

That's right, so I sort of panicked and went, "Oh my God, Brett, you can't leave the kids." Because they're four and two at the time. So I rushed home thinking that he was leaving the kids, which was probably silly, but he'd organised his mum to look after them. So I left a very busy hospital ward and headed home to look after the children and then found his mum here. So off to the farm we went to try and save whatever we could in whatever space of time we had available to us.

Drew Radford:

That whatever space of time I understand that went for, like what, 18 hours for you or something?

Bianca Jones:

So we arrived at midnight and left at half past 2:00 in the afternoon. So yeah, about 14 hours. Yeah.

Drew Radford:

And what did you see and what were you doing during that?

Bianca Jones:

Well, we thought we were trying to save hay and fodder, but unfortunately that was ruined. Most of it was ruined by the flood. Protecting machinery and equipment as best we could. Just picking up things to try and stop things floating away, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars of chemical, just all of things like that, lifting things up high just to save whatever we could, really. It was just a snatch and grab and let's just start getting what we could. Brett had a heap of silage wrap and net wrap and things like that ready for the contracting season that was imminent, so we had to get that up as well because if you lose that, you've got to replace it and we already had enough damage. And we irrigate out at Bridgewater, so we had to get the pump out as well because it's a very expensive pump, so we had to save that as well. So lots of things to do actually. We didn't stop. I think I rested for about an hour and I think Brett had 15 minutes for the whole time we were out there.

Drew Radford:

That sounds insanely intense, just to try and even find spaces to put those things up above water lines. And out in the paddocks though, I've seen graphic footage of literally bales floating away and we're not talking small bales, we're talking big silage round bales.

Bianca Jones:

Yeah, round bales of silage hay and straw. Yes. There's about 2,500 of those that floated away from our paddock and up to about six kilometres up the road they floated and unfortunately, they went into our paddocks across the road as well, but also three of our neighbours as well. So cleaning up all that and picking that up was not a lot of fun. And the plastic that got ripped off on the fences and things, it was hectic. I was blown away. I didn't expect them to float like that, to be honest.

Drew Radford:

Well, they're big and heavy.

Bianca Jones:

Some of them were 500 kilos, and they just floated away like they were nothing.

Drew Radford:

And in other sections too. Tell me about the grain bag that you had. And this is not a little grain bag.

Bianca Jones:

No, so it was 100 tonne of oat seed and it was facing, say north-south in one of our paddocks. And then after the flood we found it 75 metres facing east-west, just being completely picked up, moved and sat back down. So that shows the ferocity of the water. There's a reason why we're told not to drive through flood water, and that 100 tonne grain bag just shows you why because things can just be picked up and moved like it's nothing.

Drew Radford:

Terrifying illustration, if anything. And you and Brett are also trying to work around this safely?

Bianca Jones:

Yes. Yeah. That moved after we'd left though. The grain bag didn't move while we were there. We found that after the flood had gone through. So yeah, we didn't actually get to witness it move. We know where it was when we left and we know where we found it when we could get back access into the farm.

Drew Radford:

Well that was my next question. When was that that you could get back into the property?

Bianca Jones:

We went back in about three or four days afterwards, probably a little bit too soon, but not knowing was what I was struggling with at the time, and I didn't cope well with the flood. Well, he did as well as he could in terms of keeping me calm. But I didn't cope so well with the floods and I guess don't cope well with not knowing things. But yeah, I just had to know what damage was done at the farm. So we took a little trip out there and had a look and that's what we found.

Drew Radford:

Not knowing I think for most people would be incredibly stressful when in amongst this you found out you're pregnant as well, I understand, or just found out?

Bianca Jones:

We had just found out we were pregnant, so that added a whole other element of stress because I was doing things that had I have known I was pregnant, I wouldn't have been doing, lifting. The things I was lifting and things I was digging in bits and pieces.

Drew Radford:

That's a great understatement the way you phrased that, a very stressful period to say the least, Bianca. So during this period you said you're a nurse, but did that just go on hold?

Bianca Jones:

No it didn’t, it couldn't. I had to manage home, manage the floods and Brett and everything I could, but with the damage, because we had significant damage as you sort of alluded to, and we had significant losses. I needed to keep working because we needed to have some cash flow coming through, so I was doing a bit of everything at the time, to be honest. So on top of knowing that I was pregnant as well, it was really tough. But you do what you need to do to keep moving forward.

Drew Radford:

Very stoic and simply phrased, Bianca. But I imagine there was a lot going on for you and also the stress of actually seeing this afterwards. We've alluded to the damage afterwards, but a couple of thousand bales drifting away. Enormous damage I would imagine to obviously the loss of those, but fencing and everything else in between.

Bianca Jones:

So we lost quite a lot of fencing. I can't remember what Brett said. I think he said it was maybe five or six [kilometers] k of fencing, but we had some angels in BlazeAid come and put those fences back up, and without them I really don't think the fences would be back up to this day, to be honest. So we're very, very grateful for the volunteers at BlazeAid that come and put those fences back up because at least it felt like a farm again. It was weird to go out and see no boundary fences and damage to gates and things. So it was nice to have those put back up I guess, because it gave you your space I think is probably the best way I can describe it. Felt like we had our own sort of area, if that makes sense. The fence damage was bad.

Drew Radford:

You acknowledged there the importance of BlazeAid. Indeed, you ended up on A Current Affair, shining a spotlight on the work that they did. How did that affect you though? Because that puts you in another spotlight.

Bianca Jones:

Yeah, look, it does. I guess we wanted to do it. Without BlazeAid and their time and their volunteers. It's an organisation of, I think there's only two people on the payroll and everyone else that assists with BlazeAid are all volunteers. So we really wanted to give back in a way that we could to hopefully help generate some corporate sponsorship for them or to make awareness for other people. I mean, they did great things in the bushfires even before our floods, and then they moved on after us to other flood-affected areas. So we are not the only ones that they came and helped. Not even just putting up the fences. They would talk to you, they'd get to know you, understand your farm. They even gave emotional support.

It was really the wonderful people that gave up their time. I mean, there was a school teacher that come and helped at our farm and he just decided to take some long service leave from Melbourne, but I think it was one or two weeks of his time. That's incredible for just people that you've never met before to come and give time like that to help you feel like you're getting back on your feet and moving forward. I really do love the guys from BlazeAid. We would've been lost without them.

Drew Radford:

You seem to be pretty good at the understatement, Bianca. They seem very important to what you did and in terms of that support and getting back on your feet, they weren't the only ones too though, because you had a massive financial loss and navigating your way through that. First of all, before we get through the support you got in this area, just roughly, what do you reckon this has cost you and Brett?

Bianca Jones:

Probably anywhere up to $1 million.

Drew Radford:

That's a figure that most people can't get their head around, Bianca. So trying to navigate your way through getting financial support and any other support. I understand the Rural Financial Counselling Services is really important too.

Bianca Jones:

Oh, geez, where do I start about these guys far out. To be honest, for us, we have to thank our accountant, because we didn't even know that they were around until our accountant said, they can help you with the flood grants and those sorts of things. So we reached out, I got a number of Anna McGee and they're still helping us to this day. They have navigated so many things for us and they've helped us with all the paperwork. To take away that added mental pressure was amazing.

They put us onto someone else and I forget the lady's name, but my four-year old who you would've seen on the Current Affair snippet. He really didn't cope post the floods. He was having nightmares and so they put me onto someone else that could help me with kids with trauma as well. So they've helped not just from a financial aspect but from a psychological and a mental point of view as well, which has been so helpful for our family and I'm sure many other families as well.

Drew Radford:

It sounds like they've very much been an important connecting service for you, as well as a guidance service.

Bianca Jones:

They've been everything to us. So they've not only helped with the flood grants and the assistance that's been offered, but they've pointed us in the right direction for Services Australia as well and got us help there because there's been other financial help that we've been able to access that we weren't aware of. They're like an all-round service and we're so grateful for their help, because without them, the extra stress that we would've been under, and me in particular, because I do all the paperwork and the bookwork and everything, it would've been enormous and I don't know that I actually would've found the time or the mental strength and capacity to do all that on top of helping at the farm and working as a nurse and night shift most of the time it just would've been too much. I think I would've broken, to be honest.

Drew Radford:

You are doing a remarkable job of holding all of this together, and I don't say that lightly. I mean you've had the losses on the property, pregnancy, trying to recover from all of that. Now you're telling and sharing this story. What's motivating you to share this story?

Bianca Jones:

There's probably lots of things. I just hope that the Rural Financial Counselling Service continues on and continues to get the support they need and they deserve because they can help so many people in the future, and I hope this never happens again, but unfortunately, it probably will. The chances are we had one in 2011 and we went again in 2022. Unfortunately, these catastrophic weather events will occur, whether it be flood or fire, etc. It's just the nature of the land that we're in Australia. So I think they have been invaluable to us and I just hope that they're seen as being really paramount to moving agriculture forward, because without agriculture, we don't have food. But then you go back to BlazeAid and that's another complete, like I said earlier, volunteering service. If there's some way that they can continue to get support, whether it be corporate funding or donations or just from everyday people, I think it's so important because it makes a world of difference. And when you are so down in the dumps and then to have people from BlazeAid or Rural Financial Counselling come in and help you the way they've helped us, it just puts a bit of a spring back in your step and just makes you want to keep moving forward.

Drew Radford:

Bianca Jones mentioned that one of those people helping them move forward is Anna McGee. Anna says she and her colleagues from the Rural Financial Counselling Service started reaching out and offering help not long after the flood peaked.

Anna McGee:

No, it was pretty shortly after and it was evident from that first phone call that they had been impacted quite severely.

Drew Radford:

What's that like those initial phone calls? Because it must be such an important thing to set the right tone of trying to engage with them and anybody else who's been through such a traumatic experience.

Anna McGee:

It is, and I think it's just providing that environment where we listen, we don't fire off 20 intake questions, anything like that. It's just letting the farmer tell their story. Each farmer's got their own story and it's important for them and for us to understand how they've been impacted on that individual level.

Drew Radford:

So is that the case here? It's an initial phone call and then what meetings thereafter? It's a really incremental process from what you described.

Anna McGee:

It is. So we have that first phone call and then we arrange to meet. Normally we do go out on farm. However, with the floods, a lot of farms were inaccessible. So we arranged to meet at the Bridgewater railway station, which the Kooyoora Women's Network have developed into a hub of sorts and they provided us with a room or more if needed to meet with those farmers that had been impacted and get the assistance that they need and grant applications, that sort of thing underway a lot quicker.

Drew Radford:

Anna, Rural Financial Counselling has evolved a lot in recent times. Do you think that the perceptions have kept pace with that in terms of what you actually really do?

Anna McGee:

It has changed. I've been with the service since 2008, but it's still, the reason we are here is to help those farmers in need. So whether it is through natural disasters such as fire, flood, drought, where they're for all farmers, but we help if they've experienced say a farm accident or they've got health issues as well that are impacting on the financial viability of the farm. While, it's changed, the same focus is the farmer.

Drew Radford:

It sounds very much like a service that's almost connecting the dots.

Anna McGee:

Yeah, it is. Yes, we can help with grant applications or accessing financial assistance, but it's also perhaps reconnecting them with their bank manager, with their lawyer, with their accountant or with health services, whether it be for physical or mental wellbeing. So it's that holistic service that we provide.

Drew Radford:

I imagine, Anna, in those early days, it was almost like a triage kind of situation in terms of you would be dealing with people in shock, that just dealing with their day would've been enough, let alone trying to fill out complicated forms or think about how to get around an issue.

Anna McGee:

Yes, and that's it. And very early on, I remember we were out at Jarklin at the Four Posts Hotel. We had set up a hub out there after a phone call from the owner who recognised that there was a need in the community. And sitting around the tables there, there were looks of shock, but once again, each person reacted differently. So there was some in shock. You had others in tears, others that were set upon, "All right, we've got to knuckle down and start with the repair." That was about being able to recognise where each of the individuals were at and what they needed from us for their own recovery.

Drew Radford:

And from that, have there been measures implemented to simplify grant information and streamline some of those administrative tasks to help farmers?

Anna McGee:

Yeah, yeah. And some came armed. When we have that initial phone call, we'll say, "If you're able to get hold of your financials, your rates notices." That sort of thing, bring them along." If not, and the client agrees to, we can get a client authority signed and the local councils have been really good in supplying things like rates notices to us and our existing networks of local accountants as well. So as soon as we have that authority signed, we're able to collect documents for the clients to allow them to get on with the repair and recovery of their farm.

Drew Radford:

I used the term a moment ago, triage, but the work that you and the team does, it's a long-term association, isn't it? It's not just coming into these hubs and hooking up and go, "Great, here's your form, see you later." This is a long-term relationship.

Anna McGee:

It is, it is. And we can often deal with the immediate financial crisis, but then it's about sitting down and working out options that the individual can implement so that next time they are faced with a difficult situation, they're more prepared, they're more resilient. So it's giving them the tools as well.

Drew Radford:

Using that word resilience is so important. So you are talking there about obviously getting past that initial shock and trauma, but long-term development of financial structures and business plans and putting them in contact with people to facilitate that.

Anna McGee:

Yeah, and once again, it is based on what the farmer needs. So I've worked with one from as simple as setting up and teaching him how to use BPAY, navigating the myGov system as well, to more complex business plans and initial discussions regarding succession planning as well. So it's just a real individual approach that we take. We don't believe that one size fits all. We adapt what we do to meet the needs of the farmer.

Drew Radford:

Anna, it must be difficult as well. I mean, you probably get satisfaction out of it, but it's got to be tough as well when you're seeing these stories of hardship after a crisis like a flood or a fire.

Anna McGee:

Yeah, it is. But driving away, whether it is from like a hub where you've seen 10, 15 farmers in a day or whether you've spent a day with just one farmer, you still drive away thinking, my God, these people are incredible to get up day after day. And if I can help completing some forms or just helping them reconnect with their bank manager, I'm happy to do it. So yeah, no, I do find it very rewarding.

Drew Radford:

What are some of the other challenges farming families are currently facing and concerns that you're helping out with?

Anna McGee:

The big one at the moment is the cost of living, so groceries, etc. But even supplies like steel for fencing, repairs, fertiliser, they've all gone up quite a lot as well. There's also the added pressure of increased interest rates. So when you have that coupled with poor or lower income due to floods, it really impacts on our farming clients.

Drew Radford:

And I get the impression, it's the old adage of getting onto things sooner rather than letting them escalate and get bad is a really important approach. Nip it in the bud.

Anna McGee:

It is. Getting in early means that there's a lot more options available. Banks are more willing to negotiate as well. I really, really encourage farmers that are out there that are doing it tough, just to give us a call and we can explore the options available for them.

Drew Radford:

So Anna, how do people get in contact with you and the team?

Anna McGee:

Well, the Rural Financial Counselling Service is a national service. We do have three services in Victoria, and I'm from the Victoria West Service. So the best way to get in contact with us is by calling 1300 735 578. And there are also links on the Agriculture Victoria website as well.

Drew Radford:

Well, Anna, it's a remarkable service that you and the team provide, and helping farmers keep on doing what they really need to be doing, which is feeding us. Thank you so much for taking the time and all the efforts that you've made and your team's made in supporting farmers through recent crisis and just what they do generally. Anna McGee, Rural Financial Counsellor, thank you for joining us for this After the Flood podcast.

Anna McGee:

Thanks, Drew.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186.

To access recovery and resilience support, programs and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Centre for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season. For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Centre for Farmer Health website.

This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire Podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Drew Radford:

Recovery from a disaster like a fire or a flood involves much more than rebuilding homes or repairing damaged property. It's recovering from the personal trauma that's often unseen, hidden or talked about.

G'day, I'm Drew Radford and an important part of this process is talking and sharing stories. The person who understands this only too well is Brad McEwan, who for a couple of decades made his living sharing stories as a sports reporter for Channel 10. These days, he uses those communication and people skills as a Beyond Blue Ambassador. When he saw 90% of the homes in his community of Rochester inundated by floods in 2022, he knew he had to start helping. To discuss how he's doing this and why helping with mental health is so important, he joins me for this After the Flood podcast. Brad, thanks for your time.

Brad McEwan:

My pleasure, Drew. I enjoy having a chat.

Drew Radford:

Well, you've done that for a career though, haven't you, Brad? Chatting, telling stories, it's been pretty central to you.

Brad McEwan:

Yeah, it has, Drew. I was only saying to somebody this morning ahead of a mental health wellbeing presentation we have coming up, and this chap was a former AFL footballer. I said I primarily worked as a journalist, not because I wanted to break stories and not because I wanted to upset the apple cart and be a big name, I did it because I love stories and I love people. And I know without question, everyone has a story. So what I love is finding out what that story is or those stories are...I was only saying to someone the other day, I love meeting elite athletes and everyone around sports is fantastic, but it's the volunteers and the spectators and all the other people that make the fabric of elite sports so special. They are the ones that I really, really treasure.

Drew Radford:

That's a great description. I like your term fabric there, and I want to talk to you about the fabric of rural and regional communities because before you were a sports journalist, you grew up in a regional community. Where'd you grow up?

Brad McEwan:

I grew up in Lockington.

Drew Radford:

So where's that for those that don't know?

Brad McEwan:

It's 20 minutes from Echuca and it's about 45 minutes from Bendigo. So we're talking about Northern Victoria and there's a great story that comes with that because anyone listening to this that's from a very small community when they're away, it might be interstate or overseas. And when people say, where are you from? You have choices, do I go where I'm actually from? But then most people are never going to have heard of it. So in a place like Lockington, when I grew up I think the population was around 300.

I'd met a lovely young couple in Paris, would you believe, Drew? So I'm sitting there having a coffee and I struck up a conversation and the young woman says, "Brad, where are you from?" And I thought, well, geez, we're in Paris. I'm not going to say Lockington. And the next best bet is 20 minutes away, Rochester. Rochester's about 3,000 people. I thought, oh, I could go Rochester, but no, we are in Paris. We're a long way away. The next option would be Echuca, maybe 15,000 or 20,000, I'm not sure. Not bad, might give it a crack. I went the safe option Drew and I said, "I'm from Bendigo." And with that, she looked at me and she smiled and she says, "Oh my goodness. It is a small world. My mum is from a little town not far from Bendigo called Lockington."

Drew Radford:

Fantastic. So yeah, it is a small world and a great description of where you grew up. And the Lockington point is really important because you went to Rochester High and we want to talk about Rochester and the community around there because in 2022, they suffered terribly from the floods.

Brad McEwan:

Yeah, and I'd have to bring that into present tense. They are suffering. They are suffering because of the floods. My parents, for example, their house is just taking forever. They're insured and most people are in the same boat. And that breaks your heart, Drew. It breaks your heart.

Drew Radford:

It does indeed. And your context is entirely correct there. They are still going through it. And any disaster takes a long time to recover from, Brad. And I want to talk about your role as a Beyond Blue Ambassador because that's very dear to you. You grew up in Lockington, but I'm trying to work out the connection of the regional area growing up and how you ended up being a Beyond Blue Ambassador. And there's a pretty tough personal story in the middle of that in terms of what your family went through.

Brad McEwan:

Yeah, there is. And I remember the first time I spoke about it, Drew, I rang my Mum and my sister to I suppose ask, get their permission to share our story because it's not just my story, it's our story. But going back in the late '80s, early '90s, we went through an awful, awful period and we lost both my brother and father to suicide within two years. How do you get on with life after that? Well, as Mum said, Mum is a district nurse and my sister's a nurse. And what do you do? You get on with life because you've got no choice. But out of that, you do develop an incredible resilience and you also develop incredible compassion and empathy for to be quite frank, everyone. I think I worry about everyone, which is a lot to take on sometimes Drew, but when Beyond Blue said, "Would you like to be an ambassador for us?" I said, "Absolutely." Because I know our story helps other people.

And the other thing is, I'll say Drew back at Lockington when the pub was going to close and the community banded together and they bought the pub and I jumped on the Board for a couple of years and I remember a mate from back home, one of our first Board meetings, he said, "Brad, it's just great that you're back here and you're doing this, but can I just ask why? You haven't lived here for a long time?" And I looked at him and I said, "That is the easiest question I will ever get in my life." I said, "Because it's home."

Drew Radford:

And home's always going to be with you, isn't it? Especially...your folks are still there. Well, down the road in Rochester, I should add, but yeah.

Brad McEwan:

Yeah, my Mum and my stepdad, they're down the road. When we went through that terrible, terrible life-changing period, Drew, it's the community that picks you up. It's the community that's dropping in a casserole and a meal every day for weeks and weeks. Drew, I love a good casserole, I really do. But even after about a month of casseroles, I said, "Mum, I think we need to take time out from the casseroles."

But small communities, the way they band together, and whenever anyone says, "Where are you from?" I say, "I'm from the country." And honestly, I think I grow about two feet taller, and I pump my chest out because I'm so proud.

Drew Radford:

Well, it is a lot to be proud of and the context that you've just given there is really, really important because it gives you connection with rural and regional communities, you understand how they work. And you also understand grief in those particular environments. You are going back there all the time at the moment, you're regularly up at Rochester to see your folks and also sporting games. So what are you seeing?

Brad McEwan:

What I'm seeing is a broken community, a community that is struggling, a community that is trying to get on with life. Little things that you notice and it really hits you. A mate of mine after the footy one day he said to a dear friend of his who's in his late 60s, he said, "Oh geez, big day. I just can't wait to go home and lay on the couch and watch the footy." It's a comment that all of us make. And his mate said, "Yeah, I'd love to too." But he can't because they're living in a caravan and will be for a while yet. So to see the people that you grew up admiring, looking up to, leaders in the community to see them broken, to see them living in fear, where do we go? What do we do? What if we get another flood? To see a number of my friends' parents have been in...needed psychiatric help because of the ordeal.

I remember at the start of the footy season, I said to a mate, the footy club president, Justin, we went to high school together and I asked him, how are things? And he lives there every day in the community. And he said, "People talk about back then when the flood happened in mid-October." He said, "I would say right now." And this was around April, he said, "I would say right now is about 10 times worse because most businesses are closed and the vast majority of residents are not living in their homes. They're in caravans or they're living in Echuca or Bendigo."

And I'll tell you something that really struck me, Drew was driving around Rochester, it's one thing to live in a street and be surrounded by people because essentially what we're talking about here is people and so many people, they think, I work in this business, I work in that business. But fundamentally, so many of us, we're in the people business and our people make things or help people or drive things, but it's all about the people. And that's what makes Rochester and every other small community so incredible. But imagine you're the only house. I remember looking at a neighbour of my parents, and she was out sweeping the front yard, but I looked left and I looked right, and I thought, there's no one else here, that's pretty lonely.

Drew Radford:

It is pretty lonely. And it was a huge number of houses. So it was 95% of the houses, I think.

Brad McEwan:

Yeah, so I think a rough figure Drew, it might be 1,000 homes, properties in Rochester, and that's just Rochester. It's not including everyone else in the area that was either impacted by the flood of the Campaspe River, the Murray River, the Goulburn River. But yeah, so over 90%, I think there was maybe one street I know of in Rochester that wasn't flooded. One.

Drew Radford:

It's hard to fathom unless you drive around and you look at the absence of people, which you described really, really well. Let's talk about what you are doing now. Your role as a Beyond Blue Ambassador. You are getting up to Rochester to the games. You're helping the community out. We talked a little bit earlier before we started recording about going to the games and Beyond Blue's there as well. So what's going on and how are you helping?

Brad McEwan:

Because I live in Melbourne now, I don't get back to a lot of footy but as soon as the flood happened, I just knew in my role that the community needed help. And the fact that it is my home and I have a connection back there, a really strong connection, I wanted to do something and I knew that I had the connections to do that. So I spoke to Beyond Blue. We set up a conference call and I just said, "Look, please, please, please." And it didn't take many pleases and Beyond Blue said "Brad, absolutely, we are there." So most home games or when they're available, we'll have at least two, sometimes three volunteers or Beyond Blue staff. And they drive up from Melbourne in 'Buddy', that's the name of their little Beyond Blue van. And they set up and there's an awning out the front and they literally perch it right up near the little coffee place at the footy ground.

And people walk past, they put out their table and they have their brochures and they have their wristbands, Beyond Blue, the blue ones that many people wear, and I've got one on right now. And they're there. And it might start off with a, "Hi, how you going?" And "Oh, hello, nice to meet you." "Oh, where have you come from?" And we love a good yack in the country. And then a couple of weeks later, it might be someone walking past and then they've, "Oh, what's this all about?" So bit by bit by bit, the community members are getting used to seeing Beyond Blue there...and even if they don't go over and have a conversation, maybe they'll go home and they might jump on Google and put Beyond Blue. Oh gee, that's interesting, isn't it? And I just feel that if Beyond Blue are going to be there, I want to be there and I feel that I need to be there because I am the connection between Beyond Blue.

And if I'm asking Beyond Blue to come up from Melbourne, well, I can do it too. And you know what? I love it. I absolutely love it because I go home and I run into people I haven't seen for a long time, and a phrase that we often hear around Rochester now is the locals feel like they've been forgotten. It just hits you in the guts every time you hear it. Oh, you haven't been forgotten. And it's one thing to say it, but we have to back it up with actions. And for me, I thought, well, hang on. One way that I can really make my point that they haven't been forgotten is to keep turning up. So to be at the football and to give someone a hug and tell a joke, usually a pretty bad joke while we're sitting around the fire having a good old chat with the people that I grew up with and chatting to their kids and their parents.

And I've got to tell you when I'm back there doing that and back where I grew up and where I still call home, it's one of the greatest feelings I ever have. And it is so special. And out of that, Drew, I remember when the floods actually happened, I was out helping Ward Brothers, a couple of fellows back home and their families, they've got an earth moving construction business and they go in, and they did it in 2011 after the flood. They go in, no matter what they're working on, all around the state or all around the country.

They go out with all their machinery and they pull up all the carpet and the underlay and then they'll go back and they'll take all the furniture out that's out on the road. And elderly people, for example, if they can't get the furniture out, well, they're fellas, it's not a problem. We'll get it out for you. And then a few weeks later or a month or six weeks later, you'll see all the plaster out because they're getting all the plaster out because it has to be replaced. And I remember in that period, around October, November, a good friend back home said, "Yeah, look, I think all the Ward's, they're doing an amazing job." But you know what? A lot of them had their homes flooded and they're dealing with insurance and all those things, and they've been into a lot of homes that have been flooded.

So they're experiencing trauma and they've witnessed it. So I said back then, "Hey, if I can help in anyway." And so a few months ago they said, "Well, Brad, if you're still keen." I said, "Keen? I would love to." So now what I do, Drew, I put on my high-vis, even got my name on my shirt. This might sound silly, but to put on that orange and blue, high-vis with my name on it...it’s ... you know over the years, I was given a Manchester United this and a Cricket Australia jumper and with your own name and this, that and Socceroos, and they're all great, but they're in a cupboard and they're nice.

But to be part of that team with my own uniform if you like, and to take that connection another step further, that's one of the items of clothing that I will treasure for the rest of my life because it means so much. So now about once a fortnight, Drew, I get to go back and I'm on the tools because what better way to connect? And I love it. I bizarrely love digging holes and I don't know why. And I hope one of the fellas there isn't listening to this because I'll probably end up digging a whole lot of holes. But I go back and we connect, we have lunch, but we are having conversations and what it says to everyone working there, "Hey, if you need a hand, Brad's there. He is here for you."

This is not another flippant comment, but I said to my mate the other day, I was out with a couple of the fellas and I drove home and the sun was shining in the distance. And I got back to my mate's house and I said, "In 20 odd years of media, and don't get me wrong, I loved working in the media. I had such an incredible experience, but I'm not sure that anything fulfilled me like it does to be home and helping. I'm really lucky. I'm really lucky to have that connection."

Drew Radford:

The things I'm taking out of here, Brad, a couple of key things are, one is Beyond Blue, just being present there and we are around to talk or even spark that thought. The other one is your profile and your previous history enabling those conversations because regional communities, rural communities, sadly sometimes stereotyped, they're not renowned for having those raw conversations. You're helping open doors.

Brad McEwan:

Yeah, the one thing I'm very, very wary of is when someone will say, "Can you do this? Can you do, whatever." And I'll say, "Yeah, I will. I'll be the conduit. I'll do whatever you want, but please just don't make it in any way about me." I want to help the people back home as do so many, I'm doing 100th of the work that a lot of people around Rochester and Echuca and people that haven't lived there for a long time are doing. We have an amazing community. And anyone listening to this from their community, they would say the same thing. But I just love getting back because what I'm really passionate about Drew is people understanding that, and this is in my humble opinion, when it comes to mental health and wellbeing and mental illness, we are hanging on to beliefs and attitudes from our parents and our grandparent's generation.

What we now know, and there's a whole lot of people a lot smarter than me doing all the research and working in this area. What we now know is mental health is part of life. There is no health without mental health. People are sitting there going, "Oh, it's different." I would say to them, okay, you are in a workplace and you are saying, okay, let's get someone to do a keynote presentation around mental health. We'll do that. It'll take a couple of hours. We'll leave a heap of pamphlets and we've ticked that box.

Tell me this, does anyone out there who goes for a run, goes to the gym, goes for a walk, has a swim, whatever it is, does anyone there go for one swim, one gym workout, one walk, one run and say, "Righto, that's it. There's my physical exercise done for the year." No, what do you got to do? We have to work on our physical health. We, including myself, I take medication for anxiety. Why? Because I can't do it on my own. We have to work on our mental health. And I tell anyone that, and I especially tell anyone and everyone back home because what I hope I'm doing is I'm saying to people, "You know what? It's okay to take off the mask. It's okay to be who you really are. There is nothing to be guilty of. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Mental health is part of life."

And the other, and I don't use this example, Drew, I put a lot of thought into this before I mention what I'm about to tell you in a public forum, but it's confronting, but it's, well, people listening will be the judge. Imagine a mate says, "Have you got time for a coffee/tea/beer/wine, whatever it is." "Yep, okay, no worries." So you go and catch up with your friend, you say, "What's wrong?" Imagine if your friend said, "I've been diagnosed with cancer." Now your heart's going to sink. And I reckon there's a fair chance that you're going to say to your friend, "All right, what's the treatment? What are we going to do?" You would fall off your seat if your friend replied to you, "Oh, look, nothing. Oh, and please don't tell anyone, I'm embarrassed."

And you look at them and say, "Are you kidding? Why are you embarrassed? It's not your fault." And that sounds ludicrous, but when it comes to mental health, millions of people around the world do that every second day. I'm weak. Why can't I be like the others? Hey, I'll tell you what I know is we all look at everyone else and go, "They've got all their stuff together." We all think everyone else has their stuff together, but they don't. And every time I get in a forum, I often say, "All right, hands up, hands up, who's just breezed through life and doesn't have any stuff and doesn't have fears, insecurities, worries, battles." No one has ever put their hand up and no one ever will because we've all got stuff. So here's the question for everybody listening to this. If we all have stuff, why do we spend the vast majority of our lives, if not all of our lives, pretending that we don't?

Drew Radford:

It's a hell of a question, Brad, and a really valid one, and I love your analogy and the parallel you drew there with cancer. Brad, for the people who don't get to come into your orbit or Beyond Blue's orbit and they might know somebody who's going through a tough time, what would you say to them to encourage a conversation or open a conversation about somebody's mental health and wellbeing?

Brad McEwan:

The first thing I would say is approach them. And it can be really hard having that initial conversation, but at the very least it says to that person you care because you are reaching out. And I've never heard of anyone being upset about someone reaching out because they care. You might get a response you don't expect, but you also need to be aware that, well, they might say, "Yeah, I do need to talk." So where do we go from there? I mean, in an absolute emergency, if you were really, really worried about someone that was urgent, you'd ring 000, then your next bet, if you're worried, would be Lifeline and then Beyond Blue. And that's one thing I'd also say, Drew, is just for those people that are listening, and if this triggers anything, please reach out to whoever that might be, Lifeline, Beyond Blue, just jump on.

But yes, have that conversation. Here's a simple thing. Talking face-to-face can be difficult if it's a difficult conversation, "Hey, what about go for a walk?" They're not looking at you and you are not looking at them. You might be walking around the lake, along the river, down the road and you can just have that conversation. I always say the best starting point is your GP. If your friend can make an appointment to see the GP, and then you can follow up. How did it go? Hey, you might be in a position where you can go with them. And the other thing is I will say, and speaking from experience as someone who regularly sees either a psychologist or a psychiatrist is, there was a great headline in The Age newspaper a few years ago by a psychologist by the name of Sabina Reed, and the headline says, finding the right mental health professional is a bit like dating.

And you know what? From my experience it is, because you might see someone, "Oh, it didn't feel like we had a connection." And you go, "Oh, this is all crap. It's not going to work." Hang on, you don't go on one date and go, "Right, that's it. Right, never getting married." What do you do? You go, "Right, I'm going to do it again. I'll give it a go." You will find someone. It might take a little while, especially for those in regional areas, but you will find someone. There are so many people out there that want to help. Yes, it can take a while, but go to your GP, it might take a while to get that right fit. But once you have that and once you are able to have those conversations, one of mum's favourite quotes is, a problem shared is a problem halved.

Every single time I walk out of a mental health clinician's rooms, I feel better. That's why I do it. That's why I do it. And I would just encourage, and the other thing is, I know I jump around a bit, Drew, but well, you know what? That's who I am. Can't pretend to be someone else. But I'll tell you the other thing is I love is, and I've really focused on since COVID actually is, the power of kindness. So Martin Seligman, the head of positive psychology at Penn University in the US, he says, "Of all the things he's tested over decades, the most powerful, most effective way to temporarily increase somebody's wellbeing is an act of kindness."

And I want to finish by saying, for anyone to put up their hand, as difficult as it might be, and it can be bloody hard, but if you put up your hand and say, "Yeah, I'm struggling, I'm going to get the help." Now, there is an incredible act of kindness because people are always watching. It might be your kids, it might be your grandkids, might be someone down the road and they're watching you put your hand up and they're going, "If they can do it, I can do it." So you are not only helping yourself, you're helping someone else.

Drew Radford:

Well, Brad, you're doing a remarkable job of helping your community. Your lived experience and passion for people, and in particular rural and regional people, lets you put yourself in their shoes and it's incredibly powerful for encouraging others to seek help. Brad McEwan, Beyond Blue Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us for this After the Flood podcast.

Brad McEwan:

Thanks, Drew. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1:

If this episode raises concerns or issues with your mental health visit beyondblue.org.au or contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186. To access recovery and resilience support, programs, and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Centre for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season. For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Centre for Farmer Health website. This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release.   For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood: Stories of Farmer Resilience and Recovery.

Drew Radford:

When it comes to dealing with disasters like fire and floods, there's one consistent piece of advice. Have a plan. G'day, I'm Drew Radford, and that was certainly the case for Simone and Alistair Murdoch, who dealt with the 2022 floods on their properties. Their plan was ultimately to remove emotion from making key decisions. It's a bit more involved than that, and to explain how, Simone joins us for this After the Flood podcast. Thanks for your time.

Simone Murdoch:

No worries, Drew. Thank you.

Drew Radford:

Simone, I understand you've moved into the region from somewhere else where floods weren't really part of the day-to-day conversation. So, where are you and where'd you move from?

Simone Murdoch:

Yeah, so, at the moment, we have our property across three places. Where we live is directly on the Murray River, on the Piangil side of Tooleybuc. Our main farm is at Kooloonong, and just north of there we own another property in a syndicate close to Boundary Bend. So, Alistair grew up at the main property at Kooloonong. I originally grew up near Kyabram in the Goulburn Valley, but Alistair and I moved to where we are now from Swan Hill itself.

Drew Radford:

So, floods were certainly part of your language then, I guess, for both of you, growing up, but not really part of your working life, for want of a better description.

Simone Murdoch:

Yeah, that's exactly right. So, yeah, we both have memories of floods in the nineties and 2011, being around us but not directly impacting us.

Drew Radford:

So, Simone, what do you run on these properties?

Simone Murdoch:

So, the majority of what we do is broadacre, so, lentils, pulses, wheat, barley, bit of hay, and also we bring sheep in and out, depending on the season, prices, etc.

Drew Radford:

So, being along the river, I assume a lot of it was under threat from flood?

Simone Murdoch:

Yeah. Well, we were fortunate that the main property at Kooloonong, where the bulk of our farming land is, it wasn't directly impacted by floods, but certainly impacted by high rainfall, and definitely the discharge points on the sides of the sand hills, which, yeah, was a lot of boggings happening over harvest, which was stressful in itself. But our property directly here at Piangil, that was certainly at high risk, and we did experience some flooding on the property near Boundary Bend.

Drew Radford:

Okay, well, let's drill down into this a little bit further. So, did you have much preparation time in terms of, "Okay, well this is potentially going to impact these properties, we've got to do something about it"? What sort of lead time did you have?

Simone Murdoch:

From memory, it was probably a one to two-week, maybe a little bit longer lead time. We knew it was coming, so we did have preparation time.

Drew Radford:

And in terms of that preparation time, what did you start to do?

Simone Murdoch:

There was a number of things that we did, other than the initial, "Oh, crap." My husband is an agronomist, Alistair, and he very much likes to make decisions based on fact and science. So one of the first steps he did was contact a surveyor to actually get the levels of the ground. And we believed that there was a marker in a tree at the river at Tooleybuc, which was supposed to be the 56 flood level. So, based off what we believed was the 56 flood level, allowed us to get other markers in our area to determine if we did reach the 56 flood level, what that would look like.

Drew Radford:

That's a very fact-based approach, working out exactly what we need to deal with.

Simone Murdoch:

Yeah, Alistair was definitely focused on, let's try to remove as much emotion from the decision-making process as we can, just so we're as prepared as we can. Because obviously, in those scenarios, especially dealing with neighbours and other people who have a lot at risk, it's difficult not to have the emotion creep in, and to feel overwhelmed, and that can lead to poor decisions as well.

Drew Radford:

It sounds a wonderful way of keeping things calm and focused. So, in terms of those decisions, I understand protecting the family home was one of the primary ones. What did you do there?

Simone Murdoch:

We had a meeting with the majority of our immediate neighbours. The surveyor actually came to the meeting as well. So, he went to each of our homes and put in markers. It turned out they must have put the 56 marker in a tree that was still growing. So, it was higher, significantly higher, than the actual 56 flood level, but not a bad thing. You'd rather overestimate than underestimate. So, we met with our neighbours and we all had markers in our yards as to what we thought the 56 level could potentially be. From that, we then took steps to protect our immediate homes. But then, we took other measures in terms of going through, what can we actually remove from the property to keep it safe, what can we lift up off the ground? All of those sorts of things.

Drew Radford:

It sounded like working in your local community was really good in terms of trying to pool resources. Has that been an important way of dealing with everything?

Simone Murdoch:

Yeah. There are certainly members of the community who do need recognition, I feel. They weren't paid at all, they used their own time, who really stepped up to the mark, and they were measuring levels on the river each day. They were really stepping through and monitoring the highway, the levees. They weren't getting paid for any of this. There was a real sort of pooling of community, a lot of sharing of local information. One particular chap who I feel deserves naming is Stuart Branson, and his family have got records of river levels for probably the last a hundred years or so. He did a hell of a lot of work, really supporting everyone and keeping an eye on the river and, yeah, really helping to coordinate the emergency response.

Drew Radford:

And what about the farming land at Boundary Bend? And you've also got some productive land near the house block as well, I think, if I understand it correctly. So, what about the actual productive land?

Simone Murdoch:

So, in terms of our house block, we had a canola crop in, and it was very much, I guess, a day-by-day scenario of, depending on where the water was going to come from, would dictate whether we would actually be able to harvest the canola or not. So, right near the turnoff to Tooleybuc on the Murray Valley highway, the river has quite a sharp U-turn, which would obviously put a lot of pressure on the outside levee. So, our concern was that if that particular levee didn't hold, there's quite a large area here that would get flooded. But the other concern is that there's a creek system that goes through our property and the neighbour’s property that was actually backing up.

So, every time that the levee breached on the river closer to where we lived, it actually raised the height of where the flood water came to. So, yeah, we were very fortunate it didn't actually quite make it here. But, yeah, it was a concern. And in terms of the Boundary Bend property, it's at Heywoods Lake, which is a very natural floodplain area. The water came through there very quickly, within a 24-hour period from when we could first see the water to when it was right through.

Drew Radford:

So, what did that do to your crops and infrastructure then?

Simone Murdoch:

We were quite fortunate with the crops in that, even though it rose quite quickly, it didn't come through and knock the crop over. In fact, it rose quickly, but it wasn't fast-flowing, from what we could tell. And the crop, we were fortunate, being quite a good crop, it was taller than the floodwater came. So, once the floodwater had receded and the ground had dried out enough, we could actually harvest some crop from above the water line.

Drew Radford:

Wow, that's quite remarkable. I assume though, as you said, boggings initially though.

Simone Murdoch:

Yeah, yeah. You'd struggle to find any Mallee farmer or Wimmera farmer who didn't have a challenge with that. And certainly, we had neighbours with one paddock that had vehicles bogged a hundred times in the one paddock. So, even though we had a high-yielding harvest, it was quite a high-stress harvest, that went for a long time.

Drew Radford:

It sounds like a stressful period for a very long time. It's not just the water is receding, and it's then recovering from there. So, the harvest was one thing. What about infrastructure? Were there issues there in terms of recovery?

Simone Murdoch:

Not so much infrastructure in terms of recovery. So, for our house here, our greatest challenge is possibly water itself ironically. Because the river quality of water was just terrible, and we usually would use river water for our house, with the exception of drinking, we couldn't use it. You couldn't bathe in it. So, we've had to buy water in. So, that was a bit of an unexpected curveball, when we turned on the tap and there was nothing left one day.

Drew Radford:

All these small things that start to accumulate and take a bit of a tax on you, I have absolutely no doubt. Just on the farming and the bogging, I understand your farm using controlled traffic farming. Did that actually help in terms of being able to get on and harvest?

Simone Murdoch:

Yep, it certainly helped. And there were strategies that we tried to implement along the way. I know some farmers took the approach of, "We'll harvest what we can, and then we'll come back later and we'll harvest the patches that are too wet to harvest now." For us, we felt that would be like doing harvest and then having to go back to do harvest 2.0. So, we tried to harvest as much as we could from each paddock, just from that mental approach of not having to go back and redo a job. But yeah, the AB lines certainly helped just to condense that compaction to those tram tracks or those wheel tracks, to give better support, because they're certainly places where if the tractor did go off or the header went off, those AB lines, it just sank like a stone and rose like a rock.

Drew Radford:

It says a lot in terms of GPS-assisted harvesting, doesn't it? In terms of being able to go over the same line every single time.

Simone Murdoch:

Yeah, absolutely. And even the patches that have been deep-ripped, you could certainly notice changes in those places too, or vulnerabilities, I should say.

Drew Radford:

You're bringing water in. You've had a drawn-out harvest, and an affected harvest. All of this cost's money. How has it affected your budgeting?

Simone Murdoch:

Well, it's certainly taken up a lot of time to make it difficult to actually do a budget. Yeah, it has had some challenges at that end of the spectrum. I mean, we were fortunate that we have been supported with good yields and good prices. We were still harvesting at the start of February. We usually have probably a good four-month period of preparation and being able to sell grain into the market in preparation for seeding, which is an expensive time with a lot of input costs and labour costs. So, it has been a little more tighter. We've had to do a little more robbing Peter and paying Paul and those sorts of strategies to deal with the costs at this time of seeding. But, like all farmers, you make it work.

Drew Radford:

Simone, you said earlier on that Alistair was very focused on a science approach, and that was about minimising the emotion that was coming into the whole process, but that would've been a reality, especially when the water was up. So, what did you both do to essentially preserve your own mental health wellbeing?

Simone Murdoch:

We're both firm believers that your stress response and your coping mechanisms are something that you need to exercise when things are good, so that when things are challenging, you're not whipping the tools out of the box then to try and deal with it. We really feel that we try to do consistently things to keep ourselves resilient. There's a number of things that we do, but one in particular is that, as often as is practical, we sit down each night with a cup of tea, a piece of chocolate, and we just talk about our day. It can be anything from what the kids have done to, "I've got this on my mind," or, "This is bothering me," or, "I dealt with this in this way. I don't know if that was right." Or, "There's a flood coming, the river's rising. How should we deal with this? What do we need to do first? What are your thoughts?" That sort of process.

Drew Radford:

It sounds like a really healthy process, too, of simply putting words to thoughts and emotions running around your head and bouncing them off somebody, as opposed to just letting them swirl around.

Simone Murdoch:

Yeah, it is actually a very useful thing. Humans, being humans, we tend to ponder things a lot, and we're all prone to overwhelm. So actually, being able to decompress those thoughts, particularly the ones that are stressful, is a really useful tool, and it's something that we started doing since we had kids. You'd finally get them to bed and go, "Right." Calmness descends. "We could actually have an adult conversation now." So, yeah, it's something that just evolved organically for us. But as time has gone on, we've found it just more and more useful and practical for how we live our lives.

Drew Radford:

It sounds incredibly useful for a particularly stressful time. Simone, lastly then, what's the flood taught you about preparedness? You're living on a river system there, and more likely than not, something like this will occur again.

Simone Murdoch:

I used to work with a chap, and one of his favourite sayings was, "Prior planning and preparation prevents pretty poor performance." And that's definitely something that you need to be aware of where you live, whether it be a bushfire, earthquake, floods, or whatever it may be. And I feel that being from a farming background for both my husband and I, that's something that we naturally do. We're aware of our environment and potential threats, or that type of thing. So, knowing where you are, what you can do, and really being able to tap into the community and those with previous experience, because every flood really is different, because it's massively impacted by what other rivers are in flood? Is there more rain coming? Are there other tributaries that are taking on some of this flood water or not? Each flood is very unique and individual, but knowing where to go to get some of that local knowledge and information is really important.

Drew Radford:

The prior planning and preparation by Simone and Alistair Murdoch certainly stood them in good stead to deal with what was, for them, an unprecedented event. Simone mentioned controlled traffic farming gave them some unexpected advantages in dealing with flooded paddocks. To understand how this helps, I caught up with Agriculture Victoria Land Management Extension Officer Darryl Pearl.

Darryl Pearl:

In brief, Drew, it's basically putting all the major pieces of equipment on a cropping farm onto the same wheel allocation. So, tram lines is another way of putting it. You have your tractor, your header, your spray unit and all of them travel on the same wheel tracks every time they go into the paddock.

Drew Radford:

Primarily, is the benefit soil compaction, avoiding that?

Darryl Pearl:

Yes. The biggest benefit is that you aren't compacting the whole paddock. And when we’re seeing anywhere from 60 to 40% of the paddock being travelled on in any one year over different practices. And by putting it all onto controlled traffic, we were getting it down into the teens, low teens, 12- 14% of the paddock. So, you're taking a big chunk of that paddock out of compaction threats and putting it all into one spot.

Drew Radford:

So, that's obviously got significant productivity outcomes.

Darryl Pearl:

It certainly can. Farmers are very much now aware of the importance of their soil structure and the soil biology in it, and every time you compact it, you're making that soil less suitable for crops to be in, because you're closing up pore spaces and everything. So, if you're not having to compact it or travel over it, it's a more friendly environment for the plant to be growing in, and sourcing moisture and nutrition. So, yes, the more you can decrease compaction, and it doesn't happen straight away, even with CTF (Controlled Traffic Farming), and it was the same with direct drill. The benefits happen over time. It’s an accumulative thing.

Drew Radford:

We're talking about flooded areas, those with CTF, does that enable them to, what, get onto paddocks earlier?

Darryl Pearl:

The CTF farmers are able to get on as long as they can stay on their tracks. It might mean they're going slower than they normally do, but they are able to stay on their CTF tracks and harvest the crop, even in paddocks that are still damp.

Drew Radford:

Staying on that track, though, is key, isn't it? And that requires some fairly significant technology, with very fine tolerances, I'm imagining.

Darryl Pearl:

Yes, you're talking auto steering and GPS guidance, and I would say that's probably one of the biggest game changers, not just for CTF, but for cropping, farming as a whole, that ability to be able to put the machine on guidance, let it sit there and directly drive up the paddock. It probably means they've got a chance to sit in the paddock and listen to a podcast while their tractor or header is doing the steering. So, it's a bit of a win-win for all of us, I think.

Drew Radford:

Yeah, no, there's no two ways about that. I like that sell. That's a great idea. What about the long-term, Darryl? Is it a case that eventually you got to rip it and redo it?

Darryl Pearl:

Yeah, depending on the environment you're in, more in the higher rainfall or medium rainfall with the heavier soils, in the long term, you will create wheel ruts. Every so often you have to go and renovate those wheel ruts, and there are machines out there now where you basically drive up the wheel with the tractor and the machine behind it will repair the two wheel ruts, pack the soil down and bring it back up to the same level. In the low rainfall environments, it's not as big an issue, particularly because our soils aren't so hard compacted

Drew Radford:

Lastly, Darryl, where can people find out more information about controlled traffic farming?

Darryl Pearl:

All the work that we did in our last project is in a publication that you can get off the GRDC called On the Right Track: Controlled Traffic in a Low Rainfall Zone of Southeastern Australia. Now, that has not only the research input that we did put comments and observations from farmers who are into CTF. There's also the Australian Controlled Traffic Farming Association's website, and also the Grains Research and Development Corporation, or GRDC, have information on their sites that'll help farmers get a bit of a handle on what controlled traffic is, and what the steps are that you've really got to go through. And it's not overly complex to go to a CTF program from someone who's already on direct drill and using the guidance systems that we've talked about. So, it just helps you step through that.

Drew Radford:

Well, Darryl, you've certainly helped us step through it. You've made this really clear and easy to understand, and that doesn't surprise me, because you've co-authored a fairly detailed paper on this. But, for now, though, Darryl Pearl, Land Management Extension Officer with Agriculture Victoria, thank you for taking the time and joining us for this After the Flood podcast.

Darryl Pearl:

Thank you, Drew.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186.

To access recovery and resilience support, programs and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Center for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season.

For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Center for Farmer Health website.

This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Drew Radford:

When we think of livestock on farms, it's usually the hooved variety. However, in Victoria, one of the biggest livestock groups doesn't have hooves. They have wings.

G'day, I'm Drew Radford. Pollination from the European honeybee is crucial for a third of food production. Now while bees can fly above a flood, the hives they live in can't. Sadly, the 2022 floods saw millions of bees killed. Many of them were in hives owned by Wondermazing Honeybees. To discuss what happened and how the business is recovering, I'm joined for this ‘After the Flood’ podcast by their Director and Queen Breeder, Dr. Natalie Doran-Browne. Thanks for your time.

Natalie Doran-Browne:

It's my pleasure to be here.

Drew Radford:

Natalie, I read that your expertise is around mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, calculating the carbon balance of farms, and working towards carbon-neutral farming. That seems a very long way from honeybees in some regards, so how did that happen?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

That side of things happened first. That has been my career most of my life and actually continues to be. I'm still very active in that space, and I still lead and am involved in various research projects for the agricultural sector. But somewhere part through the journey, I had a bit of a break from my research career and ended up co-founding some beekeeping businesses.

Drew Radford:

You don't just suddenly choose that though. Do you really? I mean, I understand you had a bit of an experience that got you involved.

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Yes. Well, I originally just wanted one beehive. I thought that would be amazing. I've been fascinated by bees for a long time, and with the Australian invention of the Flow Hive, I thought, "Okay, I think I could manage that if the harvesting is simplified," which is what the Flow Hive does, and you still need to check the health of the bees. But I thought, "Okay, that makes it a bit easier." I went out, got a Flow Hive, and decided to go and catch my first swarm. I invited my husband along to do that, and it started from there because then he wanted a beehive too. We grew very rapidly. Perhaps a bit unconventional in terms of beekeeping, but my husband has a background as a builder and is quite confident in terms of doing things with houses. We got into relocating beehives as a result. Two months down the track, we had 15 beehives, and at the end of our first season, we were getting close to 50.

Drew Radford:

That's quite a few beehives, and you've got to move them around basically, so there's work involved. We want to talk about the impact of the flood on your hives and your business. When the flood hit, how many hives were you looking after?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

We had about 250 at the time.

Drew Radford:

That's a lot of hives to be dealing with. With your background in terms of working with climate, I could imagine you would've been thinking pretty carefully about where you locate those hives.

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Absolutely. We always look at our apiary sites and consider emergency situations such as floods, bushfire, drought. Drought being because it will affect the food source of the bees. So, in particular, as a beekeeper, you're always thinking ahead of what's flowering and where the hives need to go, how you're going to get them there when you're going to get them there. So it does require a fair bit of forward planning. But at that particular time of the year, we were putting them on to canola, which is very good for building up bee numbers and bee health. So we've been to the same farm a number of years and decided to go back there. The particular hive didn't have a history of flooding or any issues in that regard, so we thought that the site would be okay.

Drew Radford:

How many hives did you have out there at the time, Natalie? Whereabouts? This is near Rochester, was it?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Yes, out near Rochester. We had about 150 hives out there at the time. Actually, it might've been a bit more, it was probably closer to 180 or a bit more than that. Hive numbers in spring change substantially because you often split the hives in two, so there's a bit of growth and retraction depending on the time of year.

Drew Radford:

An important part of the local industry as well. Bees play such a crucial role in the food chain, pollination, I've heard the number down to one in every three mouthfuls of food can be attributed to a bee.

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Yeah, absolutely. Possibly, even more than that, about a third of our average diet relies entirely on insect pollinators, and an additional third partially relies on insect pollinators. European honeybees are one of the main pollinators that we use for our agricultural industries and we are very reliant on them to produce our food.

Drew Radford:

So, you’re performing this important role for canola crops out in that part of the world, and you see a weather event coming, what happens? How's it play out?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Well, we knew that there was a fair bit of rain expected in the season. I keep a watch on the climate forecast as well, and we were very strongly in La Niña cycle, which a lot of people and farmers understand that generally means heavier rainfall. We had just come off of almond pollination. We'd brought [the hives] down from the north and out to the Rochester area, even though there was a lot of rain coming, we did not think that there'd be issues for the hives. They weren't near the main river systems for Rochester. Our hives were affected by some of the creeks that flow off from the main rivers. They didn't seem to be in harm's way.

Drew Radford:

You've planned where they should be and safely where they'd be, and sadly they weren't out of harm's way. What was the impact on the hives?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Yeah, it was a huge impact. We were very affected by the floods. We keep our hives separated even if we're at the same farm. For biosecurity reasons, we split them into three separate apiaries that just helps you to manage anything, should there be an outbreak of some sort of pest or disease. We had the three sites. One of the sites ended up being okay. The second site, about half the bees were okay and half weren't. The third site was the one that was deeply impacted. There was no hive left within 50 to 100 meters at that third site.

The farmer was fantastic. We couldn't actually get to the farm because the access roads were underwater and not safe to travel. But he was home and he jumped in his tractor and went out and had a look at each of the apiary sites to check how the hives were doing. But that last one, he told us that they were all gone basically. At first, we were thinking, well, maybe he just thinks that they're gone because the waters come up against the bottom of the hives. But we quickly realised that wasn't the case and what he was telling us was that the entire hives were either underwater or had been swept away in the floods.

Drew Radford:

It's really traumatic to hear, Natalie. I don't say that lightly. I mean, this is literally millions of creatures.

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Yeah, the cleanup was intense, and it was traumatic. It really was because even though they're insects, it's not quite the same as a sheep or a cow, but still, you do have some affection for any animals that you're responsible for and just the hives that didn't make it, having to clean out millions upon millions of dead bees was really an awful experience. It's hard to really convey the impact unless you've been through a flood and had to manage part of that cleanup in whatever capacity. But when it's bees and just having to clean that and just the smell of so many dead bees, it's really not a good experience.

Drew Radford:

Natalie, you said it's hard to convey, but I can actually hear in your voice the impact that it's had on you. How long was it until you and your husband could actually get in and access the hives?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

That was the difficult thing that the rain stopped, the sunlight came out. It was perfect beekeeping weather. But we couldn't get to the hives. Every single day, we were watching the weather, we were contacting the farmer to check what it was like over there, and we were ready to go. But we couldn't access the site for about 10 days after the farmer initially told us [that] the hives were affected. We were wanting to get to them from that moment, but it took over a week for the roads to clear enough to at least be able to get to them.

Drew Radford:

Natalie, it's millions of bees. How many hives out of that 150 do you think you lost?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

We lost about 120 in the end. It was a big percentage of our total hives, and we'll obviously take some time to build all of that up again. But, yes, it was a big job. I mean, the loss is bad, but managing it and cleaning up, that is a huge task as well to undertake.

Drew Radford:

I think that's a big understatement to say the least, Natalie. What I didn't get from you at the start was how many years has it taken to build up to these numbers of hives.

Natalie Doran-Browne:

We've been in business for about seven or eight years now. It would've taken us at least five or six years to get to those hive numbers, and certainly didn't take very long to in an extreme event like that for the numbers to be cut back so drastically.

Drew Radford:

Yes, a drastic cutback and obviously, a personal impact, a financial impact. What about the broader impact? Because you play such a crucial role in the agricultural sector, what does it mean for the upcoming season do you think?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

It definitely is going to impact the farms that we normally provide pollination services for. Particularly, the almond industry because, of course, we're not the only beekeepers that were affected by floods or have been affected by other events. Particularly, in New South Wales, the Varroa mite coming in there. Beekeepers don't have the same freedom to move their hives around. The almonds in Victoria are normally pollinated by, not just Victorian farmers, but also New South Wales and Queensland beekeepers. There's an ongoing impact across Southern Australia when any of our hives are affected, it's going to have that flow-on effect to other horticultural farmers and potentially in the supply that we have of our food.

Drew Radford:

That's quite concerning when you map it out like that. It's quite logical as well because there's an important role the bees play in the food chain. You mentioned briefly the Varroa mite, so not only have you had flood, but you're also worried about another impact.

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Yes. In Australia, because we do have that distance, it does act as a bit of a buffer from some of the worst diseases, but it's not a given that it's going to protect us forever from various pests and diseases, and that's what we're starting to see.

Drew Radford:

It's a big manual labour thing that you had to face. Did you get any support on that front?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Yes, it really helped having some friends who were commercial beekeepers just contacting us out of the blue and saying, "Look, if you need us to come and help for a day or two, we are happy to do that." That was tremendously helpful because at that time we were just trying to save as many beehives as we could, and it did require that manual work in order to get them through. Having an extra pair of hands was really helpful, and I'm sure allowed additional hives to survive the aftermath of the floods.

Drew Radford:

Natalie, in the recovery phase, obviously, you've talked about hives cleaning up and those things. What about the sector? What support have you got from your fellow beekeepers?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Well, we've had some good relationships with both commercial and hobby beekeepers. Both my husband and I have been active in a number of recreational beekeeping groups. We might give presentations there or provide other types of support. One of the things that came out of the floods, which was completely unexpected, was that one of the beekeeping clubs, they found out that we had lost a number of hives, and that particular club, which is based in Werribee, it's called Werribeeks, they got their members together and decided that any swarms that they caught that season that they didn't need, that they would actually donate to us.

That club and through connections outside of the club as well, but it was driven through the club. They ended up donating over 50 hives to us, which was just such a kindness and so unexpected and just something that really means so much when you're in the position at the time to receive that type of support from other people. That mattered in so many ways. The bees especially, but beyond the bees, just to experience such support from so many people was really wonderful. We also had support in terms of knowledge from some friends that are commercial beekeepers and who had experienced flooding in New South Wales before, so they were able to tell us exactly the types of things that we needed to go in and check our hives to give them the greatest chance of surviving.

Drew Radford:

There are some positive things that have come out of it. What about moving forward, Natalie, in terms of running your business from here on inwards? What things have you learned from this awful experience which you think might set you up better for something like this happening again in the future?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

It's a really difficult question. I would love to say that there's some immediate and obvious learning experiences that we could take away. It does point out the vulnerabilities in the business, and for us being a smaller beekeeper that is in not having our own trucks and forklifts and the heavier type of equipment to more easily move beehives. So some of the issues we already knew about, and some are difficult to manage. For example, if you want to move a couple of hundred beehives, you can't just show up and shift them all without a lot of thought going into it.

There's a lot of manual handling. It's a big job. So we are not at the scale where we can just get forklifts out and move them more easily. We are having to think about how much we want to keep the same structure in terms of migratory beekeeping. But as you mentioned before, that does have the impact on more than just ourselves. If we cut out some of the pollination, that impacts other industries as well. But realistically, we might need to consider our existing structure of where we put our hives.

Drew Radford:

There's a lot to take on board there, Natalie. Is there anything you would like for those listening to take away from our conversation?

Natalie Doran-Browne:

My main message would be to try and support your local beekeepers. Especially, the commercial beekeepers by using local Australian honey and other bee products. Australia has some of the best honey and beeswax products in the world. We've got a really good quality product, and it does really help when people go out of their way to purchase Australian made. I'm speaking for honey products, but that, of course, is any Australian farming-type products. Support your local farmer, and it really does help us at the end of the day.

Drew Radford:

Well, Natalie, you and your husband are doing an amazing job in terms of really supporting primary production in this country. I'm particularly fond of eating, and the role that honeybees play is so crucial in that process. I'm sorry to hear what you've been through. It's wonderful to hear about the support that you've got from people within the sector. But for now, though, Dr. Natalie Doran-Browne, Director of Wondermazing Honeybees, thank you for taking the time and sharing your story with us on this After the Flood podcast.

Natalie Doran-Browne:

Thank you. It's been great to chat.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186. To access recovery and resilience support, programs, and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Centre for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season. For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Centre for Farmer Health website. This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Drew Radford:

Imagine being surrounded by flood water approaching from three different directions. Not only does that make it unpredictable in terms of how it's going to rise and how far it's going to rise, but the water is also starting to lap at the top of your last line of defense, a levee, an earth bank which you are frantically adding to and repairing because this is what's stopping your piggery with 20,000 head in it from going under.

G'day, I'm Drew Radford, and this was the tense reality faced by Murray Van der Drift and his family in the 2022 floods. To discuss how they dealt with it, and importantly, what they've learned from it and can share from it, Murray joins us for this After the Flood podcast. Thanks for your time.

Murray Van der Drift:

Thank you for having me, Drew.

Drew Radford:

Murray, whereabouts do you farm? And describe the country to me around there.

Murray Van der Drift:

We're located in North Western Victoria near Kerang. So we're about an hour away from the Murray, from Echuca or Barham - a lot of the surrounding country and indeed our farm is set up on flood irrigation. So yeah, it's a very invested community in terms of the inputs and it was a massive dairy area in the past. Obviously with the dairy exit there's been a lot of dairy farmers leave the area. But yeah, a lot of beef farmers are now crop farmers are in our area in a broadacre sense as well.

Drew Radford:

From my understanding, Murray, your family's been up there for a while. In fact, you've got a young son, what's he? Fourth generation?

Murray Van der Drift:

Yeah, so Dustin will be the fourth generation on the farm. He's only just turned one. But yeah, my grandfather immigrated from Holland, back when he was 18 and worked his way from Queensland down to Victoria and settled down with my grandmother down here near Kerang, and they started with a beef farm down here and then went back into pigs after that. And now we run a very mixed operation that still has both pigs and cattle and sheep, and have changed and developed the business into having a couple of cattle studs and not just commercial cattle alongside the pigs.

Drew Radford:

That's quite a bit going on Murray. And on top of that you do a bit of cropping.

Murray Van der Drift:

Yeah, correct. So we try to get in about 2,000 hectares of either wheat, barley and oats for hay production, a little bit of vetch.

Drew Radford:

That also adds to the complexity I'd imagine, Murray, in terms of dealing with something like a flood. Now you've described the area where you are. Now, I'm assuming there's plenty of water running around there, because historically the dairy farms drew upon it, but you've got tributaries running around, you feeding into the Murray.

Murray Van der Drift:

Yeah, so we're far enough away from the Murray that all of our water is more in open and above ground channels. There is still some that comes off creeks, either up stream of us or further downstream of us, but not too many in our immediate local area do that. Probably our biggest water source that's close that then feeds back into the channel system, is Know (Ghow) Swamp.

Drew Radford:

Murray, one of the limitations of a podcast is not having the joy of having a map in front of us all. But what you're describing sounds fairly complex in terms of you're getting hit from a number of different directions in terms of water flows and peaking at different times. Am I getting the right sense of that?

Murray Van der Drift:

Yeah, correct. We had three different directions it came from and luckily enough for us, we didn't have all three at once. We had two at once, but not all three. So once our main element had left in the Calivil flooding and the biggest risk was gone there, the others were minor losses to us in terms of land. There was still significant losses in terms of land and crops, but we didn't have the direct threat of our piggery under threat of going underwater for sure.

Drew Radford:

From hearing that, I feel a bit punch drunk, because most people deal with water from one direction. You got three different factors going on. I imagine that dragged it out for want of a better description. Most people see, okay, the water's coming from here, it's passing through and then it's gone. So how long did this go on for?

Murray Van der Drift:

Well, we say we lost the month of October, but I think it'd be closer to six weeks that we were under threat from the floods coming and we had plenty going on in between that. We had the Loddon rising and the Calivil starting to come. We also run a few alpacas and shearing the alpacas takes one week in October and we do it in the first week of October. We had a massive risk of the Calivil coming and flooding our piggery while we were trying to shear them.

So it was a matter of working all day in the shed, shearing and then coming back and trying to make sure that the banks were still all right and not under too much threat near the piggery. Our piggery being the size it is and the fact that we've got 20 odd thousand pigs in there, we had to maintain a pretty strong bank to stop any water from getting in there and flooding that section of the farm and the sheds.

Drew Radford:

You must have been absolutely cactus. I mean that sounds very stressful to say the least, but just frantically putting a finger in the proverbial dyke.

Murray Van der Drift:

Yeah, correct. And the other aspect of it was farms in our area have whole farm management plans, so they're completely laid out with flood irrigation and we like to reuse the water that runs off the bottom. We like to be able to make sure we're getting the full efficiency.

Normally in the autumn, in the spring, we send around fresh water and we let our dam go at a certain rate and then we pump it back up to the level of the channel and we can use to flood irrigate it. The floods had the other aspect where all the rain that kept falling in September and October had already filled all of our capacity that we had. So we were constantly while building the banks, going back through the night and filling up pumps with diesel just to make sure that the pump never stopped. We knew that if the pump stopped, we were going to flood internally from what was falling from the sky.

Drew Radford:

Well there's now another element that I hadn't even envisaged at all, that inside the levee bank, the sheer volume of water falling from the sky, that's quite hard to get your head around. So you're surrounded by water. I imagine you've got a couple of other things going on, Murray, in terms of you need people, workers coming in helping you, 20,000 pigs takes a few people to help with and also feed.

Murray Van der Drift:

Correct. So our staff was a massive issue. We normally have between 12 and 14 people. COVID sort of had us down to as low as nine people back in COVID times of not being able to find staff to work in our piggery, which was a whole challenge in itself. We went from COVID to having the flood and have found a few staff since and then had them living in local towns and local communities and roads cut that they couldn't get there, and some people were going from what would be a 20-minute drive to work and they're prepared to do that, to over an hour and they're saying, "We're not prepared to drive over an hour to come to work, let alone an hour to go home again."

And luckily for us, we had a farmhouse that one of our workers was living in and so there was actually three bunk in with him.

So we went down to eight people in the flood instead of the 12 that we had, which is a lot of manpower, four people is a lot of manpower. But that was another aspect that was up to our piggery manager to try and make that happen and dad and I were really focused on trying to make sure that the water didn't come in the sheds. So he had that juggling act and then the feed situation, our feed normally comes from only about 22 kms away and they were going over 60 and 70 kilometers to get that feed in.

We generally use about 300 tonne of feed in a week, which is 12 or so semi-loads of feed a week and we'd send out five semi loads of pigs a week. So yeah, we were expecting to still be able to get those numbers of trucks in and those numbers of trucks out. There's no way of stopping pig production quickly and they soon grow out of market specifications when you go over a 100 kilos live weight, that means that we're not going to hit our market specs for our wholesalers and repercussions of that come back to everyone.

Drew Radford:

Murray, there are so many different things that you are juggling there and dealing with. I want to talk about recovery off the back of that. First of all, how are you mate? And it's sounds like it's still continuing.

Murray Van der Drift:

Correct. So we say we lost a month of October and to be honest, we were short-staffed before that. So the old man and I have had a massive headache in trying to keep up with a bit of workload. We're lucky to have one worker outside, but still currently interviewing people to have more workers outside. We should probably have three with dad and I out on the farm and we've only had one for about the last four years, just haven't been able to get, there's no draw to the area and after the floods and that it wasn't great publicity to try and get people to come to the area. So yeah, it's been a massive juggling act. Luckily I work with my old man, I'm very lucky to work with my old man every day. But yeah, it's good to have two different sets of mindsets.

My grandfather was lucky when he was farming the land that they never had any substantial floods, but he was very smart in how he set up the farm and the fact that back then he farmed through a lot of droughts and they were looking to maximise every litre of water possible and he was actually building dams for the opposite reason. He was building dams to be able to capture any release water that had been let go and try to make sure that he could capitalise on that and use that to farm. Whereas we in the floods have had to use the dams as a reservoir of being able to move the water out of the way and reduce the risk that way. So luckily with the couple of generations on the farm, we're able to work through those things, but yes, we're still behind. We're still trying to make every hour in the day count but I know that there was a lot of nervous people in our community that thought that the October was then going to continue like the 2011 flood and we were going to flood again in January and you can see around the community that people are just starting to pack up from the floods. There's just starting to be banks moved and excavators clean up dirt that was just put in piles close handy in case they had to shut off roads and the likes there. So a lot of our towns are certainly still feeling it and everyone's still feeling it, not just the farmers, everyone within the town as well.

Drew Radford:

I reckon that's probably a pretty big understatement, Murray. What about rebuilding around the property? I mean you lost a whole lot of productive land, you dug up paddocks, etc. How are you going with that?

Murray Van der Drift:

We obviously lost crop in the flood. There was nothing we could do about that. The stock we put out there to see whether they'd eat it, because it sat in water, nothing would eat it. So going into farm it, we've had to plough around the outsides and try to burn what was left, because we couldn't get through it with our machines to try and sow. We lost the production, we lost our crop. Nothing we could all do about that. All the neighbors were the same in that and plenty of people lost a lot more than what we did. We were lucky, we lost no infrastructure, massive infrastructure in terms of sheds and houses. We had several very close, we had 40 tonne of fertiliser sitting on the floor of a shed that we never thought was going to flood, but we lost land. In a flood everyone's going to lose land and you'd rather be able to protect your house and your sheds and those bigger assets and we weren't as affected as much as a lot of our neighbours. We moved a lot of cattle and sheep to high ground that we knew was high. We had to move some of them again, that we thought was higher than what it was, but we had enough space to put them out. We had neighbours that had to truck all their cattle out and go milk in different places and they were gone for eight, 10 weeks. They had massive repercussions compared to what we had. We certainly had losses, but we were certainly lucky in what we could have lost. That's for sure.

Drew Radford:

Murray, that's a very Australian way of looking at it too. Yeah, we had some problems but Joe down the road had worse and I appreciate that sentiment and it certainly sounds to be the case, but surely this has hurt you financially as well though.

Murray Van der Drift:

Yeah, correct. We were paying triple in the cartage of our grain or pellets. Everything in the pigs is fed pellets. We were paying triple cartage there, because they were going three times kilometers to get to us. We were paying double the amount in freight to get our pigs to slaughter so that all eats into your profit margins as there's nothing you can do about that, I guess you have to ride it out. We lost grain, what could we do about that? Nothing really. We just had to get on, make the most of what we had. We still managed to strip 400 tonne of grain and sell that off or make that into pig feed. One thing it's always easy to do is pick out the negatives in life and pick out the things that go wrong and make it all too hard. But if you don't look forward to tomorrow and try to do something else and life will be too hard.

So we just kept motoring on and pushing on and every day we like to think we're catching up. I don't know whether we are, but we do certainly like to think that we might be catching up a little bit. And I mean financial losses, everyone in the beef industry, everyone in the lamb industry and the pork, we've all seen a massive downfall in end price for our product this year. Like cattle are at 40%, sorry, have lost 40% of what they were last year in value. And through these floods we bought cattle just before the flood to make sure that we had them for this year and we fed them all through all the summer like we'd planned, but we had the extra element of the flood in there and nothing you can do. There's always going to be that risk with farming, I guess.

Farming's not easy, that's why everyone doesn't do it. So we've had our tough time with things financially, but luckily enough with the throughput of the piggery, we're in a good position financially that we have a constant income and we just have to keep the turnover going to keep up with that. And yeah, there's a lot of people out there that are a lot worse. And the little dairy farm that sits sort of in the middle of us, they milked their cows somewhere else for 10 weeks and I was speaking to them the other day, they reckon they lost 150,000 litres, because it went in someone else's vat and someone else got paid for it, because they were feeding the cows and looking after it.

But there were other neighbours around us who had to slaughter cattle immediately instead of milking 700, they went down to milking 650. It was better for them they thought to get rid of 50 cows instantly, and I'm sure they've got rid of more since, but they watched their crops and they fodder it was going to feed those cows for the next 12 months, go underwater and then and there made the decision in the floods, we can still get a truck in and we can get rid of 50 or 60 cows now and we know that we're not going to have to feed them. So we were lucky our model and farming didn't necessarily change as much as what we could see the direct impact of our neighbours having.

And luckily for us, the flood sort of, it can hold you in a little bit, but our neighbours were very good. We were all asking one another what was happening and where it was bottle necking and whether everyone had dry land to put their stock on and trying to help out, because floods are very quick to divide people in terms of people cutting banks and we didn't want that. We'd like to keep our neighbours and there's not very many of us in the area anymore. A lot of us have got bigger and so we all knew what was going on and where it was going to go on one other's farm. So we wanted to try and work together as much as we could and protect ourselves at the same time.

Drew Radford:

Sounds like a wonderful community approach, which helped you all a lot. What about next time, Murray? And I don't like saying that, but you are third generation on the property, you've seen floods before. What are you doing to prepare for the future?

Murray Van der Drift:

My old man's motto is we've had two in 11 years and they're both supposed to be one in 100 and one in 200 year floods - we shouldn't see another one for a while. But yeah.

Drew Radford:

I like that.

Murray Van der Drift:

I like his theory too, in a lot of ways, but I don't see that being possible the way the weather events are happening. I think we're going to see it sooner again. But I mean our main bank that protects our piggery, we've already upgraded. As soon as it was dry enough, we put extra dirt into that, we made it wider, we made it stronger and did it properly, because we know that that's our biggest risk and we can't let those pigs flood. We couldn't let 20,000 pigs go underwater and there's nowhere to shift pigs. With the biosecurity issues and all of those complexities and shifting that tonnage of animals, it is impossible. You can't just let them out of the sheds and put them back in there tomorrow. So we've maintained that most of our houses are on higher ground and we have a few sheds that were at risk that we know that if it was to come again and we thought that it was going to come again, we're lucky we've got an excavator and we'd build right around our sheds and put a bank right around the shed to protect it.

But at the same time, any flood, it's got to be expected that land's going to go underwater. You can only protect your assets and there'll be people that their whole farms have got to go under and maybe neighbours are going to need a paddock to put some stock in. But in the long haul and the whole grand scheme of things, it's very hard to prepare, because everyone's different.

I don't think a flood...you can do a lot of preparation for. A fire...you can back burn and keep things clean. A flood will go where the water's going to go and how much water no one really knows until it gets there.

Drew Radford:

Murray, what do you reckon you've learnt from this experience that you might be able to share with others that are facing similar situations?

Murray Van der Drift:

That's a question that I've been asked a few times now and it's a hard one. Every flood's going to be different. So I think it's just relationships within your community and having an idea and being prepared to listen to what's going on up stream. We had had a phone call back in the start of September from the fellow who carts all our pigs and he rung us and he said, "I'm flooding."

And we said, "There's no water anywhere." And he said, "No, I'm serious. I'm about to go underwater here. I'm going to have to get my trucks out and park them in your place." So certainly listening to what people are saying, up stream's always a positive thing, because they're already in trouble and they know what's going on in their area. If they've got more water than they'd had last time, you're expecting you are going to get more water downstream and it doesn't take a lot of rain to compile that.

Drew Radford:

Well, it certainly sounds like you have listened to what's going on around you, Murray. Lastly, what about you mate? When are you going to have a break?

Murray Van der Drift:

That's a good question. My fiancé asks that of me all the time, but doesn't really happen too often. We seem to use any excuse to get off the farm as a break. There's a couple of bull sales coming up in the near future and we'll probably venture up to them and take a day or two extra off the farm and that's what we generally call a holiday and try to catch up with some people.

Drew Radford:

Getting away to deal with your stud side sounds a bit like a working holiday there, Murray, to paint it the best possible way. Murray Van der Drift, thank you so much for taking the time. You've certainly gone through a lot with your family dealing with the 2022 flood. I know that you still haven't finished dealing with it, but thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your insights of what you've learned from that particularly and joining us here in the After the Flood studio.

Murray Van der Drift:

No, thank you very much for having me, Drew. And I'd just say to everyone that listen to what's going on around you and hopefully we'll all get through the next one and hopefully it's a little bit further away than what we all hoped too. It'd be nice not to see one for a little while after two in 11 years, anyway.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186.

To access recovery and resilience support programs and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Center for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season.

For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Center for Farmer Health website. This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast.

All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Drew Radford:

Budgeting, as part of flood preparation, is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when facing something like the floods of 2022. G'day. I'm Drew Radford and being finance focused has been crucial to Ulunja Farm quickly recovering from those floods. That's according to Chris Steele from Palmary Solutions, he’s worked closely on the development of the property. To discuss this finance focus and much more, he joins us for this After the Flood podcast. Chris, thanks for your time.

Chris Steele:

Thank you very much for having me.

Drew Radford:

Chris, first of all, whereabouts is Ulunja, and can you also describe the property? What's it look like?

Chris Steele:

Ulunja is in the country town of Barmah, in northern Victoria, right on the Murray River. However, it's got its challenges that it's 250 meters off the river, and it's got a national park in between, and we've got to try to get water to that property. It's a beautiful property. It's got a big, nice sacred site through the middle. It's got great topography, it's flat. It used to be a rice farm which has its challenges, but the good thing is its nicely laser leveled because rice paddies have to be flat.

Drew Radford:

Chris, you work closely with local First Nations people to develop a plan for Ulunja. After reviewing farming options, which range from cattle through to citrus, what was the final direction decided upon?

Chris Steele:

First the conversation was, what would you like to do? And the conversation we wanted to do there was sheep, cattle and they wanted to bush foods, things like that. But then we're finding out, okay, this land is a beautiful parcel of land. It's been the last 10 years, it's been covered in weeds. It needs some money spent to get the weed bank down. That was more money than what a government could give, what granting what the First Nations had.

This is where the traditional owner engagement piece came in. We first looked at citrus, viticulture. However, when we did it, the size of the property just wasn't big enough. But also when you'd start doing First Nations projects, when people invest money onto a First Nations property, it's about the exit strategy. If you and I have got into a business together and all of a sudden we don't like each other for some particular reason, whatever that is, you wear red hats, I wear blue, then all of a sudden I want to leave and we sell up. It's actually impossible to sell this land because it's got cultural significance or sacred sites. There was no real exit strategy for the money invested. What I had to look around for was, what other opportunities are out there? And when I found it, I found a capability partner that does medicinal Manuka Honey, this is a great product because it's Australian native.

It's a very large export market for the middle Asian market. The hard part is, you’ve got to use irrigation, which is a large cost. I work together getting a framework together of doing a 10-year cash flow budget with a capability partner who has known off-take agreements for the future to sell overseas. And they're going to give management advice to come through how to run the property. But then we worked through with government to get funds, grant funding to then pay for that. That's the process we went through, first tried private, didn't really work. We tried philanthropic. Then we went to government, we found that solution and worked through the funding and got it from there. We would lay on medicinal Manuka Honey and wattleseed. And that's all based off capability partners and management agreement and off-take agreements.

Drew Radford:

Okay. After working through a number of options, you settled on Manuka Honey. You also said the property though had a lot of weeds on it. I'm assuming that between it being a rice farm and finally working out what you're going to do, that there was some sort of remediation that needed to be undertaken to deal with weeds. Is that what was happening?

Chris Steele:

Yeah. The weed management plan had to be created because it's been 10 years of no money spent on the property because the First Nations people had other urgent matters being housing, jobs, training and the farm wasn't a priority. Is now a priority because they've fixed up those issues. We had a bit of trouble in the first year with the government funding that it was indicatively approved in January, of which we were going to have irrigation installed in April, May, of which we were effectively going to water weeds for a year and put some fertiliser out to really get that seed bank up. Unfortunately, the government funding was delayed and the money wasn't released till August, which means we couldn't do any management of the weeds and the trees had to be planted in September because we needed to get the root system down before the harsh summer.

And we couldn't wait till after summer because the seedlings needed to be planted then and you can't plant them just before winter because the soil gets too wet. So it did delay us a year. So, We had a bit of a challenge in the first year, seedlings were planted down and we see the weeds were competing with the Manuka seedlings. The next year we had more time for stage two because we did over two plantings. And we've had a chance to complete our 12-month weed management plan of spraying, slashing, stopping the seeds go to seed, till the soil to make those seeds that are down a bit lower, come to the surface. And now that's a beautifully laid area. With the floods, it's interesting. A silver lining is, stage one was unfortunately underwater for two long and ruined it. The silver lining is we now have 12 months to fix that weed bank of stage one.

Drew Radford:

Basically you're back to ground zero, but you're going to be able to sort out the weed issue and pick up where you should have been in the first place.

Chris Steele:

Yeah, absolutely. It was interesting when we had some people go down there, they said, "Oh, we can't get on the paddock because the Paterson's curse." And I said, "Oh, Paterson's curse. Isn't that only up to your mid-shin height? I'll just drive over it." But then I went down there three months later and it was fence to fence inch by inch covered by Paterson's curse and I'm 6"2', but it was up to my chest height. You just couldn't walk through it.

Drew Radford:

Wow.

Chris Steele:

That's how bad the weed bank was. It was crazy.

Drew Radford:

That's a really big issue to obviously deal with, but silver lining, as you said with the floods actually mitigated that.

Chris Steele:

That's correct. We're taking a real positive outlook on the floods saying we've learned from planting, some mistakes on planting. We learned from the irrigation mistakes, we've learned from the weed plan and now we're actually applying that to stage two and that looks amazing. And now stage one is being planted again this year and stage two's getting planted this year as well, actually. It's starting to look great.

Drew Radford:

That's a great outcome, but a bunch of trauma in between to actually get to that point. I assume you lost a lot of infrastructure in the process as well.

Chris Steele:

Actually the infrastructure was just the drip line and we had fencing, we lost a pump on the river. But the good thing about where this property is, is the water seeped up and came down the old irrigation channels into the property. There was no real flow. It wasn't pounding past, so it seeped up, it sat there, drowned everything, and then evaporated out. The actual irrigation pipes, which just stayed underground, obviously they're just poly pipes, so they don't get ruined by water. Luckily there's minimal infrastructure loss except for that pump at the riverside.

Drew Radford:

You mentioned the critical time to be planting is August, so is that where you're focusing on for the next round of planting?

Chris Steele:

Absolutely. Once the floods receded in December, I was down there on site second week of January. We had people from our government supporters, our capability partners, our irrigation specialists, the AgVic irrigation was there all together. Big crew list, went around the property, sourced what the issues were, re-updated the cash flow budget, did everything. Made a 12-month plan, got agronomists on site and really forged the plan for the next 12 months to get this farm back to where it was.

The hardest thing is, we've lost two years worth of working capital. We've paid a farm manager and some farm hands and that's where the stress comes from because that wasn't budgeted for. We have to move infrastructure that was going to come onto the property like new sheds, toilets, office blocks, all this sort of stuff. We're going to have a bush seedling nursery next year. That's all been moved until the Manuka comes online in another two years time, so it's cash flow positive. We really had to move quickly to find out what we have to do to keep it cash positive really.

Drew Radford:

You said one of the biggest stresses was that loss in capital. That's obviously an impact on the community and staff, so how did they cope?

Chris Steele:

Well, the staff was fairly stressed, but it was about, let's just wait for the floods to go down. Though we haven't budgeted for a loss of plants for two years, but we did have a tiny bit of a buffer in there. And don't panic until we get the knowns. We can't panic about, we don't know yet. We got down there as soon as the flood water's receded. And once we were on site we realised the damage wasn't as bad. We did a cash flow budget based on worst case scenario, this is what it's going to look like. And then as we went through the farm, we don't have to replace the fencing, pull that back. And as we were going through it during the day, the farm manager was on site, nice young kid, he was relaxing and calming down. We can make it work. It was a very stressful time, but we made sure we focused on what we know and not try to guess what was happening.

Drew Radford:

Chris, in terms of the recovery phase, the farm contains a culturally significant site. How important is it to protect that area?

Chris Steele:

Oh, it's one of the major things. My first meeting with the First Nations people was, what is important to you about this property and what do we have to protect? And number one was the sacred site that goes through the property and also the native fauna and flora of the area. The first thing we did was fence off this cultural significant sites and they're a no go zone.

Drew Radford:

Chris, in terms of what's been planted on there now and dealing with weeds in the future, what type of indigenous management treatments are going to be employed upon the farm?

Chris Steele:

We were looking at doing cultural cool burn on it for the stage two that didn't have the irrigation down. However, we've decided to put the poly pipe down as quick as possible so we can start watering these weeds. It's going to be more of a traditional Western weed management, unfortunately. We wanted to use the cultural practices, but with timing and also the costings of it. We can get a contractor in spray, it's much more cost-efficient to do that. And because we lost the two years of working capital, we have to really go down to bare bones and find the cheapest way to do something. Unfortunately, a lot of cultural opportunities we had have had to be pushed back.

Drew Radford:

What about dealing with other pests, pest animals and also trying to trade that off and supporting native animals?

Chris Steele:

When we designed the property, we actually create... It's got an exclusion fence around the medicinal Manuka and the wattleseed. We built one, 6 foot high exclusion fence to keep rabbits and kangaroos out. However, we actually designed native pathways of fencing through the paddock. Instead of doing it very cost-effectively and just doing the perimeter, we've actually made channels so the emus and the kangaroos and what have you can actually go down these tracks and use the whole property. That's all we've had to do. But we try to keep them away from the irrigation area because rabbits are the big thing. They eat the poly pipe.

Drew Radford:

Chris, does having a diverse ecology on or around the farm help actually with the business?

Chris Steele:

It's always good for in the future when we actually start doing trading, they can see how this native product works with the native environment. Also, medicinal Manuka Honey is a native product. It'll actually help the bee population. It's actually going to be very supportive to that area, which the bees eaten by the native birds and things like that. It's got good connection to the country. We try to use a species of Leptospermum or Tea tree or Manuka tree that is to the area.

However, you've got to try to make some blend because honey is actually, its marketability is its MGO content. The higher the MGO content, the more value it is. When you go to the ALDI or Coles or Woolworths, when you get your Manuka Honey, next time have a look. It'll say like 50 MGO or a 100 MGO on the label. The higher the MGO, the more the cost, which is the antibacterial health benefit. We need to get products up to 650, 1000 MGOs. This is medicinal, so it's for sore throats, cuts, things like that. We've had to use non-native to the area varieties as well to get that MGO level up. But we use the native product there of the local species for the native animals in that area.

Drew Radford:

I'd imagine too, Manuka, you've got other advantages as well in terms of less nutrient input and being able to deal with dry climate as well.

Chris Steele:

Absolutely. The reason why it's a great product, like we looked at citrus. Citrus uses a massive amount of water because it's this European product. And it's big juicy apples and oranges. It's a big fruit area down there. But when you use Australian native, the best thing about Australian natives, they like to be bashed around a bit. They like a bit of stress and that's where they produce, because our bush is very harsh, we know that. And we're a dry climate area, so it uses a quarter of the water that the citrus does. It uses less nutrients than most. There's no leeching into the local environment, which is very important for the local flora and fauna. That's why this native product's a really good product.

Drew Radford:

Been a big event to go through. And you've found positives out of it. And it sounds like through careful budget management, you're going to get things back on track. What's the flood taught you and the team there about preparedness?

Chris Steele:

It's really taught us that we've really got a prepare for those unknowns. We had a flood dam there. The rivers haven't been up there since 1975. Well, you still got to prepare for 1975. Look at the existing infrastructure, that channel that was for the old rice farm, the river rose. And actually that channel did its own job. The job was designed to, pulled water into the paddock and it wouldn't allow water out. You've really got to focus on, okay, step by step, how does things work in the past? How you can stop that? It's an easy fix. You just got to plug the front of that irrigation channel. And it's also about making sure you're on top of your budget. A lot of people don't review their budget weekly. We do. And that way we're actually ahead of our budget by doing cost efficiency and also so when something happens, we had the funds to mobilise quickly.

If we weren't on top of our budget and where we're at, we could have been way overspent, but we weren't. And then when we did our initial budgeting, we laid some conservative budgets for costings, which gave us the buffer. It's like building a house. The foundation of what you build a house will project how the rest of the house is built, but it cost a hell of a lot of money if you get that foundation wrong. First, we got our foundation of product that is wanted and needed and met the cultural significance of the area. Then we'll get their benefits out. And then we made a budget that was conservative but also reliable and can be used in real life circumstance. Not pie in the sky, based on benchmark data, which gave us the ability, "Oh, floods happened, where are we as of today?"

And there was no panic, "Quickly get everything ready, where's all the invoices? Blah, blah, blah." It was, "We are ready. We know we're this much in front. Okay, this is the worst case scenario." And in six weeks we knew where we were, where we're going, and how we're going to achieve it, instead of six months, 12 months later. And we had government insight, we had everyone, capability partners, all updated. There was no unknown because everyone was calm and relaxed to get things done. Preparation is the key.

Drew Radford:

Chris, you tell a powerful story and a great story about being prepared in advance, particularly in terms of how your budgets are managed so that you knew what you could do. Chris Steele, consultant with Palmary Solutions, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us for this After the Flood podcast.

Chris Steele:

No worries. Thank you very much it’s been enjoyable.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186. To access recovery and resilience support programs and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Center for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season. For more information regarding campfire, please visit the National Center for Farmer Health website.

This has been an AgVic Talk and campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/AgVicTalk.

Speaker 1:

This is After the Flood, stories of farmer resilience and recovery.

Peter Tuohey:

Hi, this is Peter Tuohey, Victoria's Rural Assistance Commissioner. Welcome to the next AgVic Talk podcast season, After the Flood, stories of farmer recovery and resilience. This season zeroes in on the practical aspects of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from natural disasters. This is something I have experienced personally. I come from five generations of farming, working on an 1,800 hectare property at Pyramid Hill near Echuca, where we grow cereal crops, canola, field peas, and run a Merino ewe flock for wool and lamb production. Whilst my family farm was hit by the flood, in my role as a commissioner, I've seen many farms that were much more badly affected. As farmers, we're all too familiar with the challenges that come with working the land, the unpredictable weather, the hardships of floods, droughts, and bush fires. But resilience is woven into our DNA and we keep moving forward no matter what.

My job as Rural Assistance Commissioner is to provide advice to the Victorian Government about grants and assistance available to farmers dealing with various challenges, whether it's floods, bush fires, or droughts. While recent financial assistance programs may have closed, this podcast season is all about making sure you know that there is still support out there to help you when times are tough, or when things are good and you want to capitalise on that. Maybe you need to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria's Ag Recovery team, or the Farm Business Resilience Program, or perhaps it's tapping into the National Centre for Farmer Health. Help is available.

If you are still experiencing cashflow problems, don't be too proud to speak to a rural financial counsellor. A different set of eyes on a problem might find the solution you're looking for. If your overdraft is an issue with the bank, there's an option for mediation. Understand what those options are by reaching out to the Victorian Small Business Commission. It can take the weight off your shoulders. You'll find contacts and links for this help in the podcast shownotes. Before I sign off, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to those who've had the courage to share their stories in these podcasts. I hope it encourages more of us to talk about what we are going through and reach out if we are feeling alone.

Speaker 1:

If you'd like to speak with someone from Agriculture Victoria about the support and information available, call 136 186.

To access recovery and resilience support, programs, and information from Agriculture Victoria and the National Centre for Farmer Health, check out the notes with this podcast season.

For more information regarding Campfire, please visit the National Centre for Farmer Health website.

This has been an AgVic Talk and Campfire podcast. All information is accurate at the time of release. For more AgVic Talk podcasts, visit agriculture.vic.gov.au/agvictalk.