Despite her own family being severely impacted by the fire when it tore through Yarck, Clementine Boshevski was at Longwood on Monday, volunteering at the fodder drop-off and distribution centre to help others who’d suffered similarly to varying degrees.
“People were posting that they have to shoot calves if they don’t have feed today,” she said.
“The only way any of us are going to get back is by rallying as a community.”
Flanked by her three daughters — Scarlett, 5, Millicent, 7, and Sienna, 9 — as she took calls for assistance by phone and tapped away at a laptop, she wore a look of intense concentration.
Between calls, she said, luckily, her house had been spared the fire’s hungry wrath.
That was about the only structure that survived the inferno that raged through the property the family calls home.
“How amazing it was seeing this house standing,” she recalled.
“Everything else is gone though. There were two other houses on the property, a shed, a garage all gone, but what an absolute godsend that the house is standing.”
While lending a hand to help meet the needs of fellow community members, she was tossing up whether she should sell or agist her family’s hundred head of cattle.
With 30 cows pregnant, she said it didn’t feel right to only be feeding them bales, which was all that was possible with not a blade of grass left on the landscape they roamed.
Longwood’s Steve Tobin was pottering around the distribution yard, helping wherever he could.
“It’s my home town; if sh*t needs doing, we do it,” he said.
He was disgruntled that the Victorian Government hadn’t at least provided fuel to help the literal lifesaving efforts the community was making.
“Why can’t we have a tanker here?” Mr Tobin asked.
“People have donated their time, their feed; it’s going straight to the people.
“They can help us right now with 20 grand — just one less holiday or junket — we just need a tank full of diesel.”
Tenex Rail owner Matt Tennant, of Seymour, had made a crew available to help with heavy lifting.
“We’re helping move a bit of equipment around, doing a bit of trucking,” he said.
“Lots of roads have still got trees all over them, we’re hoping to help clear them.”
In his fleet of equipment, he has excavators with wheels instead of tracks on them, making them able to respond quicker in emergencies.
As with the floods in 2022, he said he was happy to answer state Member for Euroa Annabelle Cleeland’s call for help at no cost.
“Not only does it make you feel good to help, but if you do good, I believe it tends to come back around in some way,” Mr Tennant said.
He said Ms Cleeland was hoping to organise old, unused shipping containers from the Port of Melbourne that could be shipped to the affected region and used for goods and feed storage.
“Even if nothing else, you could roll a swag out in one and not get wet if it rains,” Mr Tennant said.
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