So I am back home. I left Monday evening, and loaded out of a property near Casino on Tuesday morning.
It was pouring rain when I loaded and the hay had been wet for some time. I was actually quite ill on Tuesday evening so didn't get far Tuesday at all.
As it continued to rain right through to Wednesday a lot of mud and crap seemed to be coming out of the hay.
Now as I know bugger all about hay I rang the organiser and asked his opinion. Obviously there was not much point taking crap hay all the way to Ilfracombe.
Brendon decided that he would like to see the hay so instead of meeting the convoy at Bourke as previously planned, I got the old A into G and set off for Darlington Point in the Riverina arriving at 9pm.
As I suspected, the hay was not great quality but it was decided by people who know hay better than me that it was still usable so rather than burn it and reload it would go.
The convoy set off Thursday morning and arrived at Ilfracombe about 7pm on Friday night.
Without going into all the details of the trip, it was for me an extremely humbling experience. Every town we went through had the streets lined with people with signs and waving and cheering. And I really do mean every town right from Darlington Point to Ilfracombe. At times miles from any town there would be a ute on the side of the road with a banner thanking us and a pile of kids waving. It was an awesome feeling to drive past those families and wave back.
I would like to thank some people but it would not be possible to cover them all, but a guy named Brendon Farell, just a farmer who saw a need and acted on it. He and his wife put the whole thing together. Yes they had help but without Brendon this would never have happened. This is the sort of person who should be Australian of the year not some overpaid spoiled bloody football player. The thing is he probably wouldn't accept it. This was his 10th run but the first to QLD.
The receival/distribution point
This shows where they got rain over Christmas and where they didnt. This was about 150 klms south of Ilfracombe.
Looking Back
Just a couple of the signs
A few stats
119 trucks
165 trailers
5000 bales/rolls of hay
Value of hay over $1.9million
Distance travelled 1850 klms
About 220,000 truck kilometres
Approx 3500 tyres
At normal running we spread out just over 50 kilometres
When we closed up to enter the larger towns we still took up 15 kilometers
It took about an hour for us to park all the trucks from arrival of the first truck at a point to the last one and about the same to get them all moving again
260 Farmers were supplied with varying amounts of hay dependent upon stock and severity of drought
The relief area covered a radius of approx 300 kilometers from Ilfracombe
Each Farmer also received a Hamper, IGA voucher, watermelons and dog food provided by Drought Angels in Chinchilla
The gratefulness shown by the farmers as they collected their hay was obvious
Crowd funding and Caltex provided assistance to the truck drivers for fuel. Each driver received fuel vouchers of $1500.00 and I can tell you that I saw many of those handed straight over to farmers as well. After all the drivers neither asked for nor expected to receive them.
Personally I was away 6 Days of which I spent almost one day in bed to crook to drive.
I did 4150 klms
I used 2100 litres of fuel.
I met some wonderful amazing people.
I will do it again in a heartbeat.