More than 30 horses were evacuated in a dramatic five-hour rescue from a stud at Congupna on Wednesday, October 19.
Krystelle Park Performance Horses Stud owner Nealy Bennett said her stock of hay to feed the horses was running out and she was unable to get more in, which was threatening the welfare of the animals.
Speaking before the rescue, Miss Bennett said she’d reached her breaking point trying to find a solution that would save her horses.
“In times like this you just need to cry,” Miss Bennett said.
“I think I’ve been strong for the past couple of weeks dealing with the floods and then we’ve had five days of just standing in rain and I think yesterday, (Tuesday, October 18) I officially broke. Yesterday I just started crying and I went, ‘Just leave me be’.”
Miss Bennett and her family bought their property at Congupna two years ago and are now watching much of their hard work redeveloping the farm into a stud for a range of horses, including Shetland, Welsh and German riding ponies, being washed away.
After the initial purchase of the property two years ago, plans to convert it into a horse stud were stalled by COVID-19 lockdowns, and now much of the work done since the lifting of those restrictions has been destroyed by flooding.
“We’re still in the process of installing a lot of it and unfortunately, it’s all been ruined in the floods,” she said.
With the flood destroying their hay stock, Miss Bennett was fast running out of feed for her horses, prompting a desperate call to the SES for help.
“We’ve run out of options, I don’t know what else to do,” she said.
Despite the challenges, Miss Bennett said the kindness of people, even when they were facing their own disasters, had buoyed her.
“My neighbours have been brilliant because they know they’ve lost all their crops, they’ve lost everything, so they’ve been doing everything they can to try and give us a hand here and make sure that our animals are safe to try and get through,” she said.
“The horses have all been rushed to a big stable complex and all are in a nice dry stable drying off.
“An amazing community effort by the Goulburn Valley to get us all out.
“We are back on the farm now making sure the house remains safe.”
Although the rescue of her horses has brought immediate relief, she said a grim outlook lied ahead for her and her neighbours.
“We’ve got a week’s worth of rain forecast, and if we get a week’s worth of rain on top of what we’re dealing with now, that’s going to be disastrous,” she said.