Dan Fitzpatrick of Dulacca called Drought Angels in February 2019 as he was struggling to pay a bill.
The creditor was threatening legal action against the drought-stricken, fourth-generation farmer, prompting him to call multiple government “aid” agencies only to hear rolling voice recordings.
“By this stage, I picked up the phone half a dozen times before I actually rang them (the Drought Angels) because I just said ‘more than likely there’ll be a bloody machine on the end anyway’.
“On the seventh time I just decided to give them a try. It rang a couple of times and next thing, there’s a human on the other end of the phone!
“I told her my plight and she said, ‘I’ll call you back in 15 minutes’. Anyway, after 10 minutes, she rang me back and said, ‘I’ve spoken to my supervisor and we’ll pay that bill for you’.
“They’ve just been amazing. That was our first encounter and ever since then, they’ve been unreal to me and my family.”
The rebranded Farm Angels provides financial assistance, as well as emotional support and practical help.
Mr Fitzpatrick said the Chinchilla-based charity could relate to the challenges farmers faced as opposed to someone sitting in a city office reading from a script.
“They took the time to actually have a chat to me and see how I was going physically and mentally,” he said.
“It was just a period in my time of life that I had no money coming in and we had a little baby girl … “
In 2019, when Poppy was one, Jada 5 and Cooper 11, Mr Fitzpatrick and his wife Callie told their children they couldn’t afford Christmas gifts.
Farm Angels realised this and soon arrived with presents to put under the tree.
“It just brought us to tears that the kids were going to have presents to open on Christmas Day,“ Mr Fitzpatrick said.
“My kids don’t call them the Drought Angels, they call them the Angels. They just helped us like you wouldn’t believe.“
Mr Fitzpatrick credits the Farm Angels with allowing his family to continue farming; breeding cattle and cropping. This year, he is enjoying sowing barley and wheat crops into juicy subsoil moisture.
“The thing that I’d like to get across though is just because we’ve had a good start to the season, it doesn’t mean the drought has ended,” he said. “The challenges continue but, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
“I always say, ‘I don’t need to go to the casino because I do enough gambling at home’! Farming is just one big gamble.”
