It’s the annual rodeo that puts the small farming community of Stonehenge, near Longreach in Western Queensland, on the map.
With no footy fields, no RSL, no library or town hall, the rodeo showgrounds are the community centre of Stonehenge.
Charmaine Batt, the secretary of the showgrounds and wife of cattle farmer David, said the rain caught the community off guard.
“I didn’t think of the rodeo grounds straight away because we obviously had our own bit going on and watching the water run past our houses,” she said.
“My husband flies a chopper so he got out as soon as he could and was just checking on people, making sure that people were safe.
“He had evacuated some neighbours into the closest town of Jundah, and then he continued on to help move what livestock he could to get them of out of the way of the river that just kept getting higher and higher.
“But then someone had actually flown over the showgrounds in their chopper and sent a photo and we were like, ‘Oh my goodness, we’ve got more on our hands here’.”
With the roads cut for weeks, Batt asked her husband to fly her into the showgrounds to see how much damage had been done.
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She said everything was caked in a thick layer of mud, including thousands of dollars’ worth of catering equipment.
But the thought of the rodeo being cancelled was heartbreaking.
“We rely on these events each year to connect and take a break from reality and just have a good weekend,” Batt said.
“The kids are all keen to participate, they can ride a horse… ride a motorbike.
“The adults come together and we connect and have a laugh and support each other and not only that, but it brings a bit of economy to the town, and keeps the town alive.
“It was very important to us that it was revived.”
In a community of only 50 people, who were all working to repair their own properties and livelihoods, it was going to take a miracle to get the showgrounds up and running in time for the rodeo in August.
And on a trip to the nearby town of Jundah, Batt found one.
“I ran into a Farm Angels stall set up there helping all the locals… we were just chatting to them and they were checking on us, seeing if we were okay and what we needed,” Batt said.
It wasn’t long after that meeting that Farm Angels chief operating officer Jenny Gailey got in touch.
Farm Angels, previously known as Drought Angels, is a national organisation that began as a grassroots effort to support local Chinchilla farmers impacted by drought in 2014.
The organisation’s key focus is supporting the mental health and wellbeing of farmers.
Batt said Gailey organised 20 BlazeAid volunteers to help at a working bee with locals, shovelling mud and cleaning windows.
She then organised another charity, GivIt, to help with sourcing $20,000 worth of canteen equipment.
Farm Angels also provided $5000 in cash to help the committee get the event up and running.
“We all think we can do it ourselves,” Batt said.
“With these kinds of disasters, we’re just sort of bracing ourselves to start fundraising, applying for grants and fixing things ourselves, and it was really a weight off our shoulders when she got in contact with us and said that she wanted to do everything she could.
“It’s not just the financial side of things and the equipment, but just the fact that they’re helping lift the whole community up in general, and she’s always just a phone call away.”
Farm Angels founder Tash Johnston said the challenges facing farmers are complex.
“Our family farms are struggling to pay their bills and put food on their own tables,” she told nine.com.au.
“The economic pressures, are mounting on them.
“There’s a big push to move to regenerative farming and improving farming techniques, which many of them are really working on but at the same time, that costs money.
“When they’re getting paid the same prices that they did back in 1973 for their beef and their grain and their milk, you know, it’s hard for them to move to these practices.
“These disasters are coming thicker and faster, in the current times, whether it’s climate change or whether it’s weather cycles, they are facing these challenges a lot closer together.
“We know this recovery is going to take them three to five years… so we stay with them, we’ll continue supporting them, checking up on them.”
She said the best way to support Australian farmers was to buy Australian produce.
“We lose a farmer every 10 days to suicide in this country,” Johnston said.
“We’ve got to do better.”
Readers seeking support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyond blue on 1300 22 4636.
Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.
MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78.
