A farmer based south of Shepparton has had a close call with his sheep during recent flood events in his region, but called the ordeal a very good lesson for his new farm.
Simon Waters, Tamleugh runs about 150 Persian rams and ewes on his 80 acre property, Tamleugh Park.
He was inundated with water from the Honeysuckle Creek and run off water from the nearby town of Violet Town during peak floods earlier this month.
He said that while many more farmers to the north of him were a little worse off than him, he had to encounter many challenges through the floods.
"The main challenge for use was ensuring our sheep remained dry," he said.
"Water from the Honeysuckle Creek flooded about a third of the property during the height of the flood, and unfortunately at one stage when I was checking the sheep out, they ran across a rapidly forming creek on my property.
"Normally it's real dry in the middle of our property and after they ran across got stuck in a corner, but fortunately, that was also dry and we kept an eye on them through the worst of the flood."
READ MORE:
He said that flooding was very deep to the north of him, but he was able to get bale of hay out to them.
"They looked pretty chilled out, so they weren't suffering with their fleece, and once the flood came down again they were able to get back across," he said.
Mr Waters said in the end the flock did not have any major issues except for one "poor sheep" who was lost due to exposure.
He also said there was a bit of irony brought about from the current wet, and there was good feed and a lot of work done on his pasture.
"I just spread some compost just before the flood, so that was a bit tough, but it is settling in, and we just have to be vigilant for our sheep," he said.
As opposed to other areas of the state, flood waters have moved through Mr Waters region rapidly, but
"We have a neighbour with a dam and we sometimes do see a trickle of a creek come through, but I had never seen something coming through that had so much gushing and flying through," he said.
"It's very green now, and I like to call it is a very Scottish summer right now."
Being new to farming, Mr Waters said they have been learning a lot through the past few weeks and said controlling sheep through a time like this was important for him.
"In fact right now, we have temporary electric fencing put in, so we are just trying to protect our sheep ahead of any upcoming we weather we may have," he said.
"We recently had 25 millimetres in a day, so we just want to try and not have sheep walk across a creek again!
"We are also sorry about some of the farms around us who got it a bit worse than us, but we will pull through together.
"We're a community."
Violet Town CFA captain Jeff Jennings, who assisted many local farmers during the ordeal, said Euroa, Shepparton and Mooroopna got hit hard with floods while areas surrounding Benalla were wet, but weren't affected as much.
"For farms, a lot of them have lost crops, and we did attend a property in Boho up in the Strathbogie Ranges that was in danger of being flooded and we took sandbags there to protect it."
"There were many areas throughout the Strathbogie Ranges that got 200mm of rain in a short period, but rain just runs off fairly quickly, while places like Violet Town and Euroa has headwater in where floods come up and down quickly.
"As far as I know canola is one crop that is being badly affected right here as they need to be windrowing it right now and I figure that's not going to happen.
"I'm not sure how other crops are fairing as many are late maturing around here and there is a chance they may get stuff off but hopefully they don't get things like rot or fungus if it continues to be wet."
Mr Jennings had visited Shepparton where he said many houses had gone under after "a convergence of the waterflows there."