Friday, January 24, 2020
On a personal note on December the 20th December, 2019 a large scale fire tore rapidly through the Adelaide Hills and took my sisters's farm at Woodside. ... the 7 ponies and horses were still on the farm and I am not sure how they are still alive.

It was an incredibly distressing afternoon wondering what state they would be in and as soon as the fire had gone through we drove up. It was like Armageddon and not something I will forget in a hurry. My sister lost fencing hay sheds, chicken coops, garden, tack room, diesel generator, water electricity and she was one of the luck ones. She only got her 3 kids out of the house 2 hours before the fire hit.
Something I will never forget. 

Horses in general across Aus have been mostly either alive or dead / requiring euthanasia, with not much in between. They are clever things if you give them a change to escape the fire - in my sisters case a dam and open internal fencing with a lot of dirt on the ground. 
 
Many people evacuated horses so they were not in the line of fire. Complete strangers helped make this happen through social media and going in with floats and trucks. As the fires came through the Adelaide hills the roads just had transport full of horses flying along them one after the other.

One of my olympic clients only managed to move 30 horses off the property an hour before the fires hit. 
 
At the same time 140 horses were twice evacuated to a local yearling complex. This brought its own set of emergency problems related to temps above 40 and travel stress. The camaraderie and community spirit throughout these terrible conditions has been amazing.

This post was last updated on