North Burnett farmers lose over 200 head cattle to 'inferno' bush fires

The curtains were drawn and the air-conditioner was cranking as outside temperatures rose above 32 degrees Celsius.

Crated dogs broke the silence on the property, announcing those coming and going.

A computer was open with multiple tabs showing the spot fires that continued to burn as they pieced together what had happened in the days before.

Their doors had been open to police, friends, and now a journalist all coming because of one thing; fires.

Some 70 blazes were being fought across the state last week, culminating in numerous evacuation orders and emergency warnings, including the North Burnett region.

The Nowlands were among those impacted last Friday when fire broke out on their 2428 hectare Mundubbera lease block, believed to be the result of a dry thunderstorm.

When it was safe enough to assess their lease block, they were expecting to find the worst.

They now presume most of their 200 head of cattle, plus calves, perished in the fire but hope some may have taken refuge in the Boyne River at the south east boundary.

The Nowlands had leased the block for nine months, with around 100 commercial and 100 stud cattle for Circle D Droughtmasters.

They had been glad to hear there was a storm brewing and were hoping for showers, but by the morning their neighbours had called to alert them that the opposite had taken place.

At the time of publishing, the fire was still active but under control, with smoke alerts in place for properties between Coongoobar Creek and Pile Gully Road.

They were still yet to hear from some neighbouring properties about the extent of the damage.

The family visited accessible parts of the block on Saturday, entering from a neighbouring property, but said since trees were still falling over around them, they were unable to go very far.

They described some areas as looking as though a dozer had been through clearing trees and estimated around 20km of fencing and a set of wooden yards was among the infrastructure lost.

Clinton Nowland, 29, said it was during that visit back to the property he saw "one of the most horrific things" he'd ever seen - a stud cow stuck on a fence, badly burnt but still alive.

Her calf was nowhere in sight.

She was one of only two cows they found on Saturday.

That particular cow belonged to his 16-year-old cousin David, who was just starting to make headway on his herd.

All David had left to show for the huge effort he had put into his stud herd was a half melted ear tag with the number 26 he managed to salvage from his cow's ear after she was put down.

"There's no sign of cattle so we don't know if they're all dead or half of them are," Clinton told Queensland Country Life.

They desperately wanted to continue their search for cattle but were waiting a few days to avoid the danger of trees potentially falling onto their vehicles.

"It's pretty devastating," Clinton said.

"We went down there and we just couldn't believe our eyes, we've never seen anything like it.

"Just how the country had burnt, it had burnt green timber to the ground so the heat that was involved in that fire must have been... you would not have wanted to have fire fighters there because they just wouldn't have made it out."

In addition to the heat and force of the fire, the family said the other factor that increased its viscosity was the multiple wind direction changes.

"The fire was pushing in a direction that I thought we might be ok because I had fire breaks in and then the wind would change and come to the north instead of going to the east and then it would swirl back to the west, so it was just determined to burn the whole of the country out," Clinton said.

"How do you fight something that's got a mind of its own?"

The family said the lease block and herd was the start of getting back on their feet again after a few turbulent years.

"Things were starting to look up for us, but now not so much," Clinton said.

Prior to the fire the property was looking dry, but there was still feed around.

The family said they were not bringing in additional feed or molasses yet but said it would have gotten to that point soon enough.

Russell questioned the idea of 'fire preparedness' and said while of course they had done what they could, putting in fire breaks and clearing appropriate tracks, ultimately the fire was like "an inferno".

"Yes we put in tracks and fire breaks, but we didn't get a fire - we ended up with a scorcher," he said.

"It didn't care about any fire breaks, it went across a 50 metre river, so how do you prepare for that?"

He likened it to the concept of drought preparedness and said with the way things had been with falling cattle prices and high fuel prices it was extremely difficult for smaller farmers to spare any additional income to purchase supplies or put in extra dams or bores.

"How do people prepare for a drought?" he said.

"What do you do? Go and stock your shed full of hay?

"How do you afford to buy it at $27 a bale?"

"You can not beat nature, you cannot prepare for something like this... if a fire is going to hit those cattle at a speed that's going to vaporise them, nobody's going to turn around and say what could they have done to stop that."

They hoped the government would act now on the warnings of an oncoming dangerous fire season and help rural communities better prepare by having more fire fighting equipment on standby and offering better fire coordination efforts for those in rural localities.

"There might not be many houses, but there's a heck of a lot of cattle in there," Russell said.

The family has set up a GoFundMe page to help them rebuild fences.