Nairana Study Centre

January 2021 saw a group of 14 young men spend their holiday time in Macksville NSW volunteering to assist BlazeAid Inc and farmers on bushfire ravaged properties. The volunteers spent 6 days on 10 different properties, clearing and rebuilding ruined fences for farmers who had their property ravaged by the 2020 bushfires.

Over the course of the week, the volunteers worked in small groups and became proficient in such techniques as: twitching, digging holes, installing stays, running the wire, straining it and tying it off.

The groups were able to clear around 1.5kms of burned and broken fences and put up approximately 2.5kms of new fences. Following the bushfires, farmers could not purchase new cattle due to the lack of fences to contain them; these fences were of critical importance to enabling the farmers to restock their properties.

Although more than a year had past since the fires, many of the people the volunteers met were still deeply affected by the experience; having suffered themselves, or known farmers who had perished, or ones who were so traumatised by the event that they had moved out of the region.

The volunteers' assistance to the farmers of the Macksville region was of tremendous value. It was obvious that having a group of young men from outside the community volunteer their time to assist, positively impacted on the morale within the farming community.