A farming couple near Cobden, in Western Victoria, were hit by bushfire on their 340ha property where they milk 500 crossbreds.
Sweeping through the region in 2022, the bushfire razed several properties.
The couple lost about 500 half-tonne rolls of hay and reasonably high-quality silage, along with 9km of boundary fencing and 200ha internally.
One of the worst parts about losing all that fencing was along the shelterbelts and the tracks.
The double fences where they took their cows in each day had gone and they were forced to clean it all up and start again.
Just on its own that is a significant amount of work – and on top if that there were the waterpipes, troughs and risers along the fence lines too. A lot of work to get it back up again.
So when family, neighbours and BlazeAid stepped in, the couple said they were enormously grateful – “and humbled”.
“Through a family friend we got onto Gallagher and these new posts they have.”
The Gallagher Solution
The Gallagher Insulated Line Post is a tailor-made, fully insulated line post for low-cost, low-maintenance permanent electric fencing for cattle, horses, sheep and deer.
Once the heavy strainer posts were put in, Girard Williams, the Gallagher territory manager, came along to work with us on some internal fencing to show us how to put it up.
The property owner says it was easy; and Gallagher had a good understanding of what he wanted.
They were also surprised they were able to do about 600m of fencing with the Insulated Line Posts in two-and-a-half hours “was quite amazing”.
“To actually put hotwires up in that time, that looked good and functioned properly, we thought that was a really good job,” he says.”
“Despite being highly cost effective, the Gallagher Insulated Line Posts are also straightforward, even for inexperienced workers to build ‘a very good looking fence’.
“The BlazeAid guys hadn’t seen them before but seemed pretty happy to work with them. They actually took some back into the BlazeAid centre and showed the rest of the BlazeAid people how these Insulated Line Posts worked. They were quite impressed.
“And I had a talk to the Gallagher GM too, he was very supportive and very generous. You feel very humbled when you meet people who want to help out.
“The day Gallagher came to show us how to put up the Insulated Line Posts it was difficult conditions to work in, but Girard jumped in, never complained, and the end result was we got a good fence out of it. They did a wonderful job, and we were proud to have them on the farm.”
