Helping Farmers Rebuild After a Bushfire

Tweet

Not too far from where I live in Western Australia, there have been disastrous bushfires which have destroyed thousands of hectares of bush, farmland and one town. The call went out for volunteers to help remove damaged fences so that farmers could start re-fencing paddocks for their stock. Vince and I spent three days rolling up wire and clearing fence-lines. Today we worked with two others and I've included a photo of us at the height of our 'dirtiness'. The guy second from the left deliberately blackened his face but the rest is all 'honourably earned'. I've managed to stay relatively clean although the barbed wire has scratched my forearms and my hands and nails are filthy. If my nails won't come clean I'll just have to wear nail-polish. I like the photo of the post where all the holes for the wires have been burnt out. There are photos of two different sheds and we saw others in similar disarray. These were hay sheds erected in paddocks. We saw galvanised gates which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere as the wooden strainers they swung from were non-existent. We saw huge bolts poking up from the ground and eventually worked out they would have held a wooden bridge which spanned a small creek, dry at the moment. It was bad enough tidying the fence-lines but how the iron from the shed rooves will ever be removed is beyond me. Maybe they will just be left where they are. There is so much to be done but we have other commitments now until next Thursday.