A collective of agencies and organisations based in the Kiewa and Ovens Valley region have come together to help farmers and urban residents in recovery efforts from a landslip in Bogong and flooding in October.
The Recovery hub Outreach blue trailer paid a visit to farmers at the Myrtleford feature female and weaner cattle sale on Thursday, with people on hand to link residents to practical support, planning and rebuilding advice, and case support.
Alpine shire emergency management coordinator Karen van Huizen said the aim of the hub was to try and find out what regional and rural communities need in their recovery.
"(We are here) to check in on how people are going, and to make connections," she said.
"We want to let them know what type of services are available, and also see how we can help with future proofing and keeping resilient."
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Ms van Huizen said the hub, which had already visited Tawonga South and Dederang prior to the cattle sale, was a relatively new concept, but many have been curious and asking questions throughout the day.
"Many people have been looking here at our trailer wondering 'what is it?' but when we start having conversations and let people know we can help them move forward with whatever help they need," she said.
Along with the Alpine shire and Red Cross, other agencies who are part of the outreach club include Small Business Victoria, Partners in Wellbeing, Gateway Health, Good Shepherd, Ag Biz Assist, Wellways, the Hume Riverina Community Legal and Emergency Recovery Victoria.
Representatives from all agencies were present hear ideas on what can be done in terms of recovery, and also provide support for those running small businesses.
Ms van Huizan said having many people from those agencies allows conversations that suit someone's particular needs, and there are possible plans to make trips out to regional events a regular occurance.
"The legal services which we have represented here, for example, start to talk about things like succession planning or insurance," she said.
"And we aren't also particularly aimed at farmers either - those who live in a town in the region can get help too."
Australian Red Cross was also part of the hub at the cattle sale, with disaster recovery officer Jai Edwards representing the organisation.
He said his charity has been busy across the state assisting farmers and rural communities over the past two years.
"We've been involved in recovery since the 2019 bushfires, and were funded on the back of that event," he said.
"More recently, off the back of the floods and the local landslides, we have been working with communities through what we call psycho-social activities to just try and bring people together."
Mr Edwards said these were as simple as fortnightly workshops in Falls Creek and community barbeques in Mount Beauty.
He also said the charity had run farm first aid workshops throughout 2021 and plan to do more of them from June across Victoria.
"In a way we are here to simply see what the community wants from us as well, and a prime example of that was a series of working dog workshop in Myrtleford back in November with trainer Gary White.
"We had 45 people turn up, which was great in that farmers turned up inthe morning with their dog and they are all having their head looking at their boots.
"At the end of the day, the dog is tied up in the trailer and everyone is talking to each other, which was what that program was all about."
On May 25, The recovery outreach hub team will visit Porepunkah and Buffalo River CFA buildings at 7am and 11am respectively, the Old store at Tawonga from 2:30pm and the Mount Beauty CFA from 4:30pm.