On Tuesday, every surface of the station manager’s office – the biggest room in the station –  was filled with cans of food, toiletries and even pet food. 

“I didn’t expect the response to be so quick and so generous,” 2NZ breakfast host James ‘Monte’ Irvine said.

“What amazes me is that it’s not just one or two cans here and there. People are coming in with two, three, four, five bags full of stuff.”

Gem FM breakfast host Peter Mason was blown away by the response, and said he’d never seen so many people so eager to help. 

“I think because the community is so close, I suppose everyone knows somebody that’s been doing it tough,” he said.

“Basically my involvement has been merely talking about it, and the community have been the ones that have put in the hard yards.”

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Donations included everything from canned food and pasta sauces to sanitary items, cleaning products, baby products and moisturiser. 

Rural Outreach and Support Services manager Vicki Higgins and Rural Financial Counsellor Geoff Mills were on hand to collect and distribute the first batch of items to locals in need. 

“The generosity of people never ceases to amaze me really. Also too, people from outside the district making donations for those in need, it’s an amazing result,” Mr Mills said.

He said his services were in demand at the moment, with many local farmers struggling with both immediate and forecasted cash flow.

“I think it’s particularly difficult at the moment because the conditions are so widespread, and options of agistment for stock or feed for stock are difficult to take on.”

“You’ve only just got to drive round and see how dry it is,” Ms Higgins said. She said the donations would “give such a lift” to farmers struggling with depression or self care during the drought. 

“Everything they’ve got’s going into feeding their animals, so a lot of farmers are doing it really tough and missing out on a lot of things for themselves,” she said.

Monte was proud to be part of locally-driven initiative, and said many people who donated felt the same way. 

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“We know they’re all doing it tough, but what we’re doing is we’re looking after our local farmers, the farmers that support the town of Inverell and the surrounding villages and towns in our listening area, that’s what we want to do,” he said.

Hearing from a stock and station agent that some farmers are spending up to $12,000 a week to keep their animals alive, Monte found it hard to comprehend the scale of their struggles. 

He was particularly amazed by number of pensioners coming in with bags of donations. 

“Now we know that pensioners are doing it pretty tough as well - they don’t have a lot of money to live off every fortnight, but they’re contributing,” he said.

“We’ve got individuals, we’ve got businesses, we’ve got young and old people - the whole community has got behind this, and I didn’t realise the scope of how big this was going to be when I decided ‘this is what we’re going to do’ two Mondays ago.”

The Fight for the Farmers food drive will continue until Friday, August 31, and locals are invited to bring donations of non perishable and long shelf life items to the 2NZ/Gem FM offices on 167 Byron Street Inverell. Gift cards and money will not be accepted until the final week of the drive due to security concerns.

Any community members looking for free, impartial financial advice can visit the Rural Financial Counselling office on suite 2, 132 Otho Street, across from the post office or call the service on 6721 0030.