Grazier in social timebomb alert
CLONCURRY district grazier Jane Mcmillan says 500,000 cattle valued at $2.5 billion have been lost in northwest Queensland’s catastrophic flood.
Ms Mcmillan from Corella Park Station north of Cloncurry said the socioeconomic impacts on inland towns and communities would be devastating. She said politicians needed to urgently get a grasp of the situation so that immediate action could be taken to stop the social side of the disaster unfolding into chaos.
She considers her own family, which owns stations in the Cloncurry and Richmond areas, to be one of the lucky ones.
“We’ve put our losses at 40 to 50 per cent so far but there are others who have lost entire herds. We still have our homes,” she said. “We need the Government to step in and stabilise our communities. We have to build this nation of ours and up here that means roads, school, hospitals and dams.
“Right now, out here, it is a catastrophe. It is out of control. We are in dire straits and politicians play disgusting.”
Ms Mcmillan called for leniency from the banks for people who have lost everything.
“There will be families who will be destroyed by this. They have lost 100 per cent of their herds. They haven’t got a breeder left. These are smaller family operations. They’ve lost everything. It will wipe out so many people,” she said.
She said people were posting stark images of dead cattle on Facebook in order to let the nation know what was happening.
“We need people to know. The s--t has hit the fan and our lives have been destroyed,” she said.
Ms Mcmillan said mental health should be an immediate priority.
Kathy Parry lives alone on Glenbervie Station, 60km southwest of Julia Creek. In politics. It is 2016 the Townsville Bulletin was at Glenbervie covering the drought. Now, Glenbervie is awash; the cattle Ms Parry nurtured through the sevenyear drought are dead. She estimates she’s lost 80 per cent of her herd.
“Initially I thought it was 60 to 80 per cent but now that I’ve been able to see out a bit, it looks like it is at least 80 per cent.”
She had a visitor come in by helicopter who said he counted 200 dead cattle along the fence near her homestead.
“I said to him, ‘don’t count them. I don’t want to know’,” she said.
She said she had one paddock where there was still some grass before the flood.
“Now … it’s covered with silt,” she said.
Ms Parry said she felt for helicopter pilots who were seeing “so much death” every day.