The Keith family narrowly avoided losing their home and livestock in a bushfire which broke out at Warrak, north-west of Beaufort.
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00:00We're all CFA volunteers and on the 22nd of February about 10 kilometers to the west of
00:06where we stand now, currently at the old Glenloggie homestead site on the Raglan office road,
00:10it started on the Thursday morning at approximately three o'clock in the afternoon. On the following
00:17Friday it had done a full lap of Mount Cole, come back to where we stand now and this is
00:21the point where it jumped the road into our property. It then over the following 36 hours
00:28burnt approximately a thousand acres of our land and destroyed about 20 kilometers of fencing.
00:36We lost 250 odd head of sheep. In the weeks to follow we had some amazing help from fellow
00:42volunteers and organisations like Blaze Aid, Need for Feed and through the VFF Hay Runners.
00:50Over the following three weeks after the fire we had four simulators of hay delivered,
00:54valued at maybe $15,000 and that was an amazing help to get us back on our feet initially
01:00and keep stock alive in the early weeks following the fire. Nine months on we've got 10 kilometers
01:05of fence completed, got our stock all back in order. Our numbers are a little bit mixed up but
01:11we lost a few. Our wool cut was down this year, that was part and parcel to the green drought
01:17but certainly seven or eight bales would have been attributed to the lost stock.
01:24In terms of where we stand we feel good about the new fencing we've got up.
01:29We've got a healthy flock of sheep and cattle and in a tough year I think we're coping okay so far.