‘This is the worst in memory’

He has been on the farm for 30 years, and he’s never seen a flood like the one that hit in late May.

“This is the worst in memory,” he said.

“We flooded, but we’re not on a lower river, so it didn’t get into our house or dairy like it did for some.

“We were very wet beforehand and that’s why the flood was so big.

“The whole Manning Valley was sodden already, and a lot of us were having trouble anyway with lameness, and had to stop planting because we couldn’t drive on paddocks.

“Then we had 600mm in a few days across the whole catchment.

“There was no dry land. The biggest difference is that a lot of the houses didn’t go under in 2021, but this time most of the farmers in the lower valley had to be evacuated.”

The 2021 flood — described as a one-in-100 event — prompted a lot of farmers to lift motors and raise feed pads to protect against future inundations.

It still didn’t work.

“This one was worse,” Tim said.

“It varied dramatically from about half a metre higher to 1.2 metres higher. The feed pads should have stayed dry, but they didn’t.”

The previous worst flood, in 1929, peaked at just under 5.99m in Taree. This one reached 6.5m.

Although he wasn’t as badly impacted as some, Tim is still counting the cost.

He did a rough calculation of what farmers in his suppliers’ group lost, including damage and production losses expected for the next three months.

It ranged from $400,000 to more than a million.

Tim was at the lower level, but a $400,000 setback was still hard to take.

“You can’t insure for a flood like that; it’s not worth it,” he said.

Apart from the waterlogging, he lost several heifers.

“I had a dry paddock with 40 heifers. I thought I lost all of them, but I managed to get 29 back,” he said.

“They just swam a few miles up the highway. Cows can generally swim and float fairly well, but it’s when they get caught up in a tree or fence.

“I couldn’t do anything about the heifers because I couldn’t get out to help them.

“I had a worker come out from town to move them to another paddock which probably saved them, because they would have washed across the highway and down the river.

“We were lucky that other people found them for us.

“The mess was unbelievable. The logs and debris on the side of the road was like you see when they’ve felled a forest.

“It wasn’t like that in ’21,” he said.

In 2021, Tim and his wife Julie were stuck on the farm for three days with no power.

This time his farm manager Bryan Bartlett arrived at 3 o’clock in the morning with his overnight bag.

“He stayed with us for the week, which made a big difference,” Tim said.

“If I had been on my own. I’d have to do something drastic like milk once a day to get through, but we were lucky because we only lost power for a couple of hours.”

Production is down about 20 per cent, but the biggest issue is still evolving.

“Looking ahead, we’re going to be down on how much silage we’re going to be able to make,” Tim said.

“It’s going to take a good two or three months to recover.

“Because it had been wet for a while, we’d only half planted so we’re getting a drone in to plant the rest, but when you plant winter feed in June, it’s already cold and it’s very slow to establish, and it’s not going to be great.”

Tim realises most of his local farmer friends have lost much more, so, in true country tradition, he’s doing his bit to help out.

He’s milking cows for a neighbour whose houses and dairy were flooded, and once he realised that he didn’t need to use his generator, he lent it to another farmer.

As a board member of eastAUSmilk, Tim is also helping on a broader scale.

Last year, eastAUSmilk’s team collectively assisted 29 farm businesses in Queensland to access disaster recovery funding and emergency freight subsidies and 11 in NSW.

“EastAUSmilk has been around everyone a few times and employed a consultant who will move to the area to support local farmers.”

He admits some farmers in the area are not travelling well.

“There is resilience, but there are a lot of farmers at an age when they’re wondering how much longer they will be going anyway.

“One has cashed in the whole herd and I think another two will go. They were already on the cusp, but this was the trigger.

“When they were predicting it, we thought it was only four years since the big flood in 2021, it’s not going to be bigger than that, but it was.

“I don’t know what would have happened if there were king tides and the water couldn’t get out.”

Tim is putting a proposal to suppliers to provide more help, and he said farmers could access Category C $25,000 disaster funding and a freight subsidy from the government — but that doesn’t cover what’s needed.

“To a dairy farmer whose milk cheque might be $150,000 a month, $25,000 doesn’t go very far. It’s basically just a semi load of hay,” he said.

Many farmers in the region were still recovering from a smaller flood in January.

Any farmer who accessed the funding in January, can’t apply this time.

He also feels for his counterparts in Victoria and South Australia who are battling drought.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Tim said.

“The drought creeps up on you, but I think I’d rather have a drought because you can set your day and cows where they can go.

“It costs you money, but you can get yourself in a pattern, but when it’s wet and boggy and you still have to move and feed cows, it’s a bastard.”