Fire plan was life-saving

On Debbie and Richard Platts’ farm at Quaama, in the Bega Valley, fences were tied up with string after the 2019-20 bushfires. Photos: Debbie and Richard Platt
Eighteen months later, fences are still tied up with string. Debbie Platt says recovery from the bushfires is ongoing. It is a view shared by all levels of government.

During the 2019-20 bushfires, Debbie and Richard Platts relied on their own and their staff’s experience with volunteer fire brigades, as well as draft fire preparedness plans available through Dairy Australia, to help them formulate a successful plan to save key assets on their farms.

With six staff, their partners and various children to protect, no-one was going to be foolhardy as bushfires threatened NSW’s Bega Valley, and their farms more directly at Quaama, Cobargo and Verona.

“We had a plan and we were lucky that the plan worked,” Debbie Platts said.

“I’m in the fire brigade and one of our staff is in the fire brigade. In early December she said we needed to talk about the bushfires.

“Richard and I had a plan in our heads, but we hadn’t documented it and we realised that wasn’t going to help our staff or ourselves.”

Debbie and Richard own a dairy farm at Quaama, where 1000 tonnes of hay was stored and 700 cows are milked. Coming into late December 2019, they were milking 650 cows, had 100 dry cows and were feeding 50 calves on the home farm.

At the Cobargo farm, they were growing out 450 head of beef-dairy-cross steers and heifers and 15-month-old Holstein steers.

At Verona, 250 joined heifers were running across the outblocks.

“We had a staff meeting on December 19 (2019),” Debbie said.

“In preparation, I documented what were our key assets to defend, what we can’t defend, what firefighting resources — mobile or fixed — we had available and what we needed to buy.

“We have three separate blocks about 20km apart in a triangle pattern.”

At the staff meeting, discussion ranged about where the fire threat was coming from, what built and other (cattle) assets were priorities, the skills and experience across the workforce, where water was and what equipment was available and needed.

“That discussion was important because it meant the staff knew what Richard and I were thinking,” Debbie said.

“At that stage, we expected a cigarette butt off the highway was our major threat. We didn’t expect what we got.

“We decided we've got to defend the dairy and the milking shed and the cattle.

“It would be ideal to defend the hayshed — with its 1000 tonne of hay — if we can.

“We identified that two of the staff houses were difficult to defend, with no water resources, and those staff had to be prepared to abandon those homes.

“We worked out how many extra hoses we needed, and I went into town shopping for those and other equipment.”

They also identified sacrifice paddocks and graded chequerboards of bare earth strips. By this method, they hoped the joined heifers at Verona could avoid the flames.

“Every year for the past six years, we’ve adopted that policy and sacrificed a grazing paddock in summer,” Debbie said.

“We were also in drought so we had bare paddocks and at Cobargo we had failed crops that naturally created this bare earth concept.

“The plan was we had a plan, we all knew what could be sacrificed to the bushfire, we had time to implement the plan as best we could, and the plan worked.”

On December 30, 2019, as the fire threatened the Sapphire Coast, Bega Valley, Brown Mountain and Shoalhaven districts, the local fire captains told Richard and Debbie they should expect all three farms to be hit by bushfire, simultaneously.

“On this information, we implemented our plan and moved all the cattle to their safe paddocks,” Debbie said.

All children and everyone’s precious belongings were gathered into one house, with their cars nearby. A staff member remained with the children.

For everyone, it was a surreal, even terrifying, experience, with heat, explosions, fires spotting 15km ahead of the main front, and constant exposure to risk.

A couple of staff members stayed at the hayshed, watching for spot fires.

At 2am on December 31, 2019, a staff member moved the milking herd onto the concrete dairy platform and turned on the sprinklers.

“She then stayed there for hours watching for threats and staying in communication with us,” Debbie said.

Richard and Debbie moved around providing support where it was needed, on the farm and in the community — the couple lost friends who were killed in the same bushfires they were facing.

“We’re feeling incredibly lucky, we didn’t lose any key infrastructure,” Debbie said.

“We lost minor and non-essential shedding, and 13 animals died from the smoke. About 35km of fencing, non-essential cattle yards and about 1500 acres (607ha) of ground — half our farming area — was burned.

“The Cobargo farm was 100 per cent burnt. The cattle were in a paddock with no water, but they were alive and unhurt.

“The cattle yards at Cobargo were burned. We picked up the Holstein steers, through the neighbour’s cattle yards, and sold them.”

That decision gave the couple some ready cash for immediate needs, which included buying hay to feed cattle on their outblocks.

The region was still in drought and with grazing country burnt, they also fed out some of the 1000 tonne of hay that was saved from spot fires, feeding cattle at Quaama, Cobargo and Verona, off the back of a ute and trailer.

With 6000 litres of diesel delivered to the farm in December, they had enough fuel for generators to keep the dairy operating and pump water. They were able to share this fuel with neighbours.

Ongoing bushfires in the district meant access roads were closed to formal deliveries and pick-ups. Because of the same access problems, Richard and Debbie did have to dump milk for seven days, but they were able to keep milking the herd.

Five days later, with the fire front resurging, Debbie and Richard made the decision to evacuate everyone from the farm to Cobargo. All the assets they didn’t want to lose were parked on the burned country on the Quaama farm.

“We’d been on the road multiple times every day, feeding livestock. Driving between the farms, you got numb. The fire threat was very real for communities around the Brown Mountain,” Debbie said.

“We were prepared for Saturday, I was in this tractor with one light patrolling back and forth. About 3 to 4pm, it suddenly turned black as the ace of spades.

“All I knew was the fires were coming out of Bemboka, then it was coming from the south, had jumped the highway at Numbugga, then it was at Brogo Dam — we’re sitting at the top of Brogo Pass, and a fireball would impact us.

“We evacuated as a group, in a convoy of a dozen cars to Cobargo. We stayed there until morning.

“Thankfully, no more bushfires impacted our farms.”

Fast forward to today and Debbie and Richard are in a different season — they harvested 12,000 tonne of wet silage into pits this summer.

But the reminders of the bushfires remain, and recovery is ongoing.

“I don’t think people realise how hard we’re working and how disconnected communities still are — every ounce of energy is being put into our farm and recovery and there’s nothing left,” Debbie said.

“There’s still fences tied up with string and fresh air.

“Most of the fencing has been patched. Every now and again, we realise a fence needs replacing and we do that.”

Some of the sheds that were burned down have been replaced. Debbie and Richard are progressively changing the layout of the farm. Like many other farmers, they’ve found a bushfire provided a unique opportunity to change the layout of a farm, altering internal fence lines.

Both commend their staff.

“Our staff were brilliant. We couldn’t have done it without them,” Debbie said.

“We all knew what we were doing. We were a team and looking after each other.

“And in the weeks after, they just got the job done — we calved 200 cows and heifers with the same due date!”

Richard and Debbie have a ‘take home’ message from their experience.

“Have a plan and good quality, maintained, equipment. The key welds on our home-built fire-fighting trailer broke after four hours of dragging around the paddock. That was not a good time to have key infrastructure fail.”

The NSW Government confirmed (in August 2021) that 6.7 per cent of the state was impacted by bushfire.

The Shoalhaven City Council, in a report summarising the impact and recovery-to-date (June 2020) from the bushfires, stated: “The full consequence of the (NSW) bushfires will never be completely realised”.