“Our horses wouldn’t know what real grass was.”
Those were the words of secondary school student Eliza Sargent, watching on as a B double of fresh, golden hay from southern NSW was unloaded on their property 145km west of Quilpie on Saturday.
She and her family – parents Stewart and Tracy Sargent and brothers Harry and Elliott – were among the drought-stricken properties in Queensland’s south west benefiting from the latest Australia Day run by 160 Burrumbuttock Hay Run truck drivers and their offsiders.
As the bales tumbled off onto the dusty ground at Cooma, Eliza commented that feeding stock had been a part of their lives for a long time.
They’re in the process of moving from Granville, north of Quilpie, where they’ve been situated for more than 30 years and which they sold to New Zealand buyers last year but are leasing back, to the property to the west of Eromanga.
Tracy said the gift of hay bales, many of them carrying the names of the donors, meant they wouldn’t have to outlay money for more for a little while.
“But it’s just nice to know people care for you and have you in their mind,” she said.
Matt Russ and Jess Gilmour, from the irrigation community of Moulamein in the Riverina district of NSW, were the ones making the delivery and said they were shocked to see that nothing had changed for the landholders in the year since they were last in the area.
Matt, who grows rice and runs trucks, has previously taken part in hay runs to Ilfracombe and Cunnamulla, while the run to Cunnamulla in 2018 was Jess’s first.
“I talked to a fair few people last year and they said, it'll break this year, the weather's changed, and here we are, back again, and it's worse than it was,” Matt said.
Read more: ‘You can’t get more Australian’
It was a similar feeling of deja vu for Jess.
“We're within 400km of where we were last year and nothing's changed. It's something you don't understand until you see it,” she said.
The Sargents took the time to show their southern Good Samaritans some of the 39,250ha property they’re enclosing with exclusion fencing, including dams with muddy red water from a recent shower of rain, and opal pickings.
“It’s a beautiful part of the world,” Tracy said as she wended her way across stony paddocks.
When they returned to Quilpie, Matt said he’d posted on social media so his friends and hay donors could see where their money and goodwill had gone.
“I was just saying I wish they could see what it's like, the people who donate especially.
“I couldn't do it every year without the people donating, and they will.
“Hopefully it turns around up here and they don't need us to keep coming up, but we can do it so we do it.”
The angst of lost production and shrinking incomes is something Matt’s pretty familiar with too; his irrigation farm currently has a zero per cent water allocation.
Last year their allocation was 58pc.
It was an even drier argument in 2005-6 when they had 5pc, then zero, then 16pc.
“It affects our income big time. We're rice growers so without water you grow nothing,” he said.
Still, having trucks meant he could help others, which he said was a great feeling.
“They were amazing people at Cooma, like everywhere we've been up here.
“They were down to earth people. We talked about making farming better. They want to be here in the long run.”
It’s what most farmers want, along with the general population, and it’s why the Burrumbuttock Hay Runners “pill of giving” works so well.
Related: Quilpie works mulga magic