Those hooved survivors are the desperately needed beacons of hope in what have been many dark days for farmers.
“Stock losses have been heartbreaking, to watch generations of breeding stock die,” community recovery volunteer Colleen Furlanetto said.
“And farmers love their animals. To shoot them is the hardest thing.”
Ms Furlanetto said she knew of one farmer who had lost 1100 sheep, and many who had lost cattle and horses.
“It’s not always an immediate death; you have to shoot them,” she said.
“We had young people going out helping farmers to do that, but the trauma of that stays with them; it’s a screen-saver that’s very hard to get off the screen.
“It’s not a clean shot; you do your best.”
The discomfort still doesn’t end there.
Farmers then have to dig pits to bury their livestock in.
“That takes a few days to do in the summer; it’s not nice,” Ms Furlanetto said.
“So to not lose people is absolutely top priority, but to lose animals and have that trauma and that amount — there’s many thousands, thousands and thousands — is hard.”
While the land lays blackened as far as the eye can see in every direction around Ruffy, it’s hard to imagine anything or anyone who was on it when the fire tore through could emerge unscathed.
“Then there’s the miraculous moment sometimes a cow will just walk out of nowhere and you just think, ‘How? How, how did you survive?’”
The Longwood fire burned 140,000 hectares of land.
Ruffy was one of the hardest hit areas.
The only two buildings to survive the bushfire were the town’s CFA shed and public hall, where a community hub has been established to aid the area’s recovery.
Sadly, the relief centre — which offers free goods and support for those who need it, no questions asked — has had to contend with feed, diesel and a wire spinner being stolen since it was established after the disaster on January 8.
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