It took several hours to find them.
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Julie Pridmore and Andrew Newby knew there would be more than 100 brumbies seeking out high ground to escape the floodwater slowly filling Barmah National Park.
They had been tipped off by a friend who flew over the forest that a mob had gathered in one part of the park, so on Melbourne Cup Day — while thousands of people stopped to watch the ‘race that stops a nation’ — another race was playing out in Australia’s largest red gum forest along the Murray River.
The two people who represent the Barmah Brumby Preservation Group searched the forest in ‘tinnies’ — the small, powered fishing boats — for the refuge chosen by the brumbies.
They found the horses on a sandhill, no more than a few hundred metres long.
It was soon devoid of grass as the horses sought out any feed.
Julie and Andrew organised a delivery, by boat, of hay donated to the group.
And on Saturday, November 5 the group returned with seven boats and more than a tonne of hay.
It took an hour to quietly motor through the flooded forest to the sandhill, where at least 120 brumbies and their foals were marooned.
“It’s like Kakadu,” one of the group remarked of the beautiful forest, now quiet, except for a pair of soaring eagles, a few flights of ducks and half-a-dozen black snakes seeking out logs and higher ground.
The group of 16 volunteers found the brumbies wary, but hungry. The sandhill also held some dead horses, a dying foal and some dead native animals.
This was a bold and, some might say, provocative move by the preservation group, which has been at odds with Parks Victoria over plans to expel the animals from the park.
As far as I could tell, the group didn’t have permission to feed the animals — but this is a sore point for the group.
Former group president Murray Willaton accuses Parks Victoria of cruelty by not trying to at least offer a maintenance feed for the animals, while their eventual destiny is sorted out.
He said if this happened to animals under the control of a farmer, they would be prosecuted.
The group wants to keep the animals alive and take horses from the park into their nearby sanctuary at Picola, where they have trained the brumbies for rehoming.
Parks Victoria and the Yorta Yorta, who jointly manage the forest, want the animals removed as they are seen as feral — an introduced species that is damaging the forest environment.
The preservation group sees the brumbies as part of the forest wildlife for 180 years and wants to see their presence controlled, but maintained.
According to documents seen by Country News, Parks Victoria has arranged for contract shooters to kill the brumbies, and shot at least 14 in May. Their bodies were left where they lay.
Parks Victoria does not want to talk about its plans for the cull and will not share information about how it is conducting the shooting, including explaining why the park is not closed for the shooting.
“As far as our group is concerned, this is something that Parks Victoria should be keeping an eye on,” Julie Pridmore said.
“If unattended they will die slowly within two or three weeks.
“So we have been boating out here every two days. We are attempting to keep some of these horses alive.”
On Monday, November 7, the group organised for a helicopter to deliver 20 round bales by air, and on Thursday, November 10, the group was told the Shepparton Incident Control Centre was committing to providing some fodder to the stranded brumbies.
Incident controller Ray Jasper said there were four out of seven islands that were of particular concern which wildlife officers were monitoring. Some animals in particularly poor condition had to be euthanased. Parks Victoria was working for the ICC in providing feed to the animals. Feed may be air lifted onto the islands.
On Saturday, November 5, the volunteers in their boats — adults and children —scattered hay on the sandhill (which was also gobbled up by a solo wallaby) and tried to assess the condition of the horses.
One foal, too weak to get up, had apparently been abandoned by its mother or the mother had died, and there was a brief discussion over the most humane thing to do.
While several children nursed the head of the little filly and stroked her, a volunteer decided she should be taken out by one of the returning boats.
She was successfully moved, but died later that night.
It was a reminder that life in the forest, no matter how beautiful, can be unforgiving.
Country News understands Parks Victoria had arranged for a vet to check on horses last week.
Shepparton News assistant editor and Country News journalist