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The world is aware of the horrendous destruction and loss of life caused by the bushfires in Victoria. ALV is out in the badly affected areas working. It is extremely hard to get admitted into the worst hit areas as they are still considered crime scenes with police tape wrapped around many properties and vehicles left totally burned out on the sides of the roads and jammed up into trees. We were able to get the rescue van in yesterday which was filled with hay/feed/water and first aid supplies along with our experienced rescue team, including Anita, Cherie and Skye. I did bush fire relief work at the Ash Wednesday disaster back in 1983 and knew what to expect and what needed to be done.

Anita, Cherie and Skye feeding the cows

I knew it would be extremely hard to locate injured wildlife at the centre of the destruction five days later so we concentrated on doing food drops around any water sources we could find in the burnt out wilderness including around dams and tiny streams. Locals had told us they saw kangaroos visiting their dams the night before, so we were happy to leave piles of food there for them to find.

It was numbing to find one totally burned out fern gully with only the stumps of once magnificent tree ferns standing in the ash alongside a small stream trickling through the masses of dead and black trees fallen across it. It was deadly quiet except for the tiny and occasional chirp from a lonely bird who we could not locate and the noise of firetrucks and SES vehicles passing on the windswept dusty road.

We also fed several groups of really hungry and thirsty cattle we located along burnt out roadsides, the fences totally destroyed. At dusk as we were driving down the mountain we decided to do one last hay drop and turned into an extremely blackened area. We came across a dazed family group of cattle - a magnificent black bull and a couple cows with their calves at foot. I’ve never seen such a regal looking bull in my life, I expected him to back right away from us, but when we approached with a bale of hay he couldn’t get to it fast enough, pulling a handful of hay straight out of my hand! We also quickly filled water buckets from our main supply in the van, and the bull was so thirsty he got his head stuck in the water bucket while emptying it. Within minutes many more heads popped up over the burnt out ridge and before long there were 30 head of cattle devouring the hay we brought.

Patty hand feeding a bull

It’s so tragic up there, I felt at such a loss seeing the handful of locals standing around their burnt out properties, trying their best to make some sense of it all. My heart breaks for them and what they are going through, many are more or less in a daze. I knew at the end of the day I would be returning to my home, my haven, my familiar place of safety and rest. They have none of this left. I was in awe of their spirit of strength and resilience and will to keep going. And the feeling of community in the state of Victoria, indeed the whole of Australia is awesome everyone seems to be personally feeling this tragedy and wanting to do something to help.

We will continue on with our feed drops and helping out any which way we can.

Hungry cows eating