Farming hero Brendan Farrell breaks down over mate’s death in emotional video
Burrumbuttock Hay Runners founder Brendan Farrell is a hero to many in the outback.
He delivers donated hay to drought-affected Aussie farmers but it means Brendan has seen first-hand the utter distress of famers in the midst of a crippling dry spells.
But today, the hardened fourth-generation farmer broke down as he found out that one of his mates he had been helping on a rural NSW cattle farm had taken his own life.
In a heart-wrenching Facebook video which has been viewed over 197,000 times and shared by over 4,000 people at the time of writing, the man who was recently awarded a Queen’s Birthday honour, said the news of the man’s death was a “real kick in the guts”.
The pair first met when Brendan was delivering dog food in 2015 to drought-affected farmers in outback NSW.
“I saw this old bloke at the side of the road,” he said. “I pulled up and said: ‘Mate, do you want some dog food? And, he said: ‘Yeah, righto.’
“I put five bags of dog food in the back of his Jeep and we got talking there and he had the oldest pair of wire strainers in the world. They must have seen more kilometres of wire than I can imagine.”
The next time he was down that way, Brendan dropped off a pair of new wire strainers and a note telling the farmer to “keep his chin up”.
The unnamed, single farmer was “gobsmacked” and the two stayed in touch ever since.
“Bonds are formed in special ways and that’s what hurt,” Brendan said as his eyes filled with tears in the video. “It’s just a real kick in the guts today, that’s all.
“To all those farmers who are thinking of doing something silly, think of a bond or a special moment.”
Brendan added the pressure of drought “is absolutely horrendous” and took aim at the government and corporations for exacerbating the mental and physical strain on the nation’s farmers.
“I’d been looking after this farmer for a while,” he said.
“I thought I was winning the battle with this fella but depression is a very dark place – I’ve been there.
“The problem is I can’t see a farmer ringing some random person in an office to spill out all their problems … I just don’t know which way you go with this.”
He said he’d hand back his award in an instant to have this bloke back.
““Every award in Australia cannot bring a life back … I would hand back my award to have this bloke back,” he said.
“He couldn’t get his cattle to market because they were too poor,” he later told Nine News. “He couldn’t sell his property because it was worth nothing. Couldn’t feed his cattle because he didn’t have enough money to buy the feed or the freight. So he is gone.”
Brendan pleaded with farming families to hang in there and urged any person contemplating the worst to just stop and think of the repercussions for family, friends, children.
“Think of a special moment, for Christ’s sake,” he begged.
“Just keep getting up out of bed, put your shoes on and your hat on, because the sun keeps rising every day.”
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