Victorian floods: Kerang farmers fight to save crops as town prepares to be cut off

Farmers along the lower Loddon are fighting to save their crops as the river rises. See the latest.

On the properties surrounding the town of Kerang in northern Victoria, farmers are fighting to save their crops as the Loddon river rises.

As of Wednesday, the river was at 77.29m Australian Height Datum and rising, with major flooding expected during Thursday.

Farmer Colin Fenton, who runs a 560ha mixed farm outside Kerang, said people were “running like rabbits out a burrow” to prepare for the floods with the bridge out of town expected to close at 7pm.

About 40 per cent of the town’s residents polled at a flood preparation meeting on Tuesday had not lived through the town’s last major flooding event in 2011.

For farmers in the region surrounding the town, a fight has been underway since last week to stop crops from drowning after 90mm of rain fell across vast swathes of cropping country.

On Mr Fenton’s property he was “pumping water off cereals on to pasture paddocks to get rid of the water”.

Submerged crops at Powlett Plains, Victoria, on Monday after the Loddon River flooded. Picture: Supplied

Across a 100km stretch of country from Kerang to Birchip in the Mallee there were “crops laying in rainwater”.

“It’s extremely difficult to get the rainwater away because there’s nowhere for it to go,” Mr Fenton said.

Farmer Bernadette Robinson, who grows 200ha of irrigated wheat and canola, said she

had been “pumping, like all of our neighbours, 24 hours a day (since the end of last week) to try and get (the water off).”

“It’s really only just starting to have an impact.”

Major flooding is now bearing down on low-lying properties around the Loddon River towns of Kerang and Appin as a front of water, which was up to 50km wide earlier this week as it peaked in Serpentine, moved downstream.

Gannawarra Shire Council mayor Charlie Gillingham said farmers could expect to be navigating flood water for weeks.

“Quite a few farms will be affected and the water will be slow to move,” Mr Gillingham said.

“It will affect dairy farmers trying to get fodder in and a lot of crops will be damaged.”

“We’re expecting a lot of rain this weekend as well. That will really exacerbate the whole situation.”

Most properties on the flood plain had ring levees around their homes, but crops and pasture were another story.

An emergency information centre has been set up in Kerang and an emergency evacuation centre is up and running in Swan Hill for any residents needing assistance.