Hats off to Walwa dairy farmer’s mental health mission

This dedicated Ambulance Victoria first responder is always ready help her fellow residents, whether it’s a medical or mental health emergency.

Volunteer Ambulance Victoria first responder Meaghan Daly on her dairy farm at Walwa.

Meaghan Daly is a nominee in The Weekly Times Heart Volunteer Awards, supported by the Powercor Country Festival. Nominate a rural volunteer and learn more about the awards here.

When there is a medical emergency in the Upper Murray region, chances are dairy farmer Meaghan Daly could be first on the scene.

The 50-year-old, whose main farm is at Jingellic, NSW, has 242ha at nearby Walwa, in Victoria. The Walwa community is where she has been a volunteer first responder with Ambulance Victoria for the past 16 years.

Living in a relatively remote area on the NSW-Victorian border, where the closest major hospital is at Albury-Wodonga about an hour and a half away, her role is an essential one that helps save lives.

Meaghan is the voice of calm and support, and provides emergency medical care for patients while they wait for an ambulance to arrive.

“I once had to stay with a young fella who had a motorbike accident for nearly two hours before any support came,” she says.

“And five or six years ago I delivered a baby in the middle of the night.”

Meaghan has also used her role with Ambulance Victoria to help raise awareness of mental health issues for farmers and rural communities following the bushfires that devastated the area last year.

She says the community was further hit when two young men took their own lives, and another lost his life to cancer in the past 12 months.

When COVID-19 hit, she says it was even more difficult to get support services into town.

“The last thing farmers want to do at the end of the day is sit on a Zoom call at night,” she says. “I think they felt alone.

“We had to get people talking.”

She designed and organised funding for 1200 caps with the message ‘You’ll never walk alone’, as well as the number for Lifeline, which were distributed to the community.

“The hat is a talking tool, to get people to say that are not OK, and to help spread the number for Lifeline,” she says.

Meaghan says volunteering is rewarding and is something her family instilled in her.

“I wouldn’t have thought I’d still be doing it 16 years later,” she says. “Volunteering has been strong in our family, you just put your hand up for your community.”

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