15-05-2025
Outback Queensland faces $80m bill to rebuild fencing after floods
Fencing double the length of Australia from east to west has been washed away in outback Queensland.
Two months on from devastating flooding, the full extent of the damage is still unclear, but so far an estimated 8,000 kilometres of fencing has been damaged or destroyed.
In recent weeks, graziers have been clearing debris and silt from fence lines, standing up fencing bent by the force of floodwater and removing fences that cannot be repaired.
Grazier Ian Groves said it would be months before he could access parts of his Jundah property where the Barcoo and Thomson Rivers met.
"We won't get into that river country until the end of winter," he said.
Mr Groves estimated at least 40km of his fencing was destroyed.
Half of that was boundary fencing, meaning there was nothing to keep his remaining stock inside his property.
More than 200,000 livestock have died or are missing in Queensland's west, across an area twice the size of Victoria.
While supply was not an issue yet, Natalie Dingle from a rural supplies shop said some materials would be hard to get, such as steel posts, drill stem, wiring and mesh.
"Even prior to the flooding there was a bit of a wait on some products, especially exclusion fencing," she said.
"That's probably going to be one of the biggest issues."
Exclusion fencing is used to keep predators like wild dogs or pigs out of paddocks and has been credited with the survival of the local sheep industry.
Since 2016, more than 9,000km of exclusion fencing has been built in Queensland, protecting almost 6 million hectares of land, costing landholders and the state government $91 million.
"It's one of the more expensive ways of fencing, but it's worth every cent of it," Ms Dingle said.
"These costs are going to knock them [graziers] around terribly.
"They're the most positive people and they're tough — they just get on with it.
"But it's going to have a big impact."
The likely repair bill is well into the millions of dollars, according to south-west grazier Kylee Tindall-Smith.
"[With] just a conservative estimate of $10,000 a kilometre, you're looking at a fencing bill of $80 million," she said.
Ms Tindall-Smith said producers were on "the great Australian fence hunt" trying to assess the damage and locate their fence lines.
"Without the fences, there's no livestock," she said.
Ms Tindall-Smith has set up an initiative called Pay 4 A Panel to help ease the financial burden on producers looking down the barrel of repair bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The initiative invites people to call a participating rural agent and pay for a fence panel or contribute some money towards fencing equipment.
"This is a way that we can really give farmers a leg up," Ms Tindall-Smith said.
Jack Tuddenham runs a fencing contracting business out of Quilpie in south-west Queensland.
He said the phone had been ringing off the hook, with jobs coming in thick and fast.
But a lack of workers meant the rebuild would be delayed.
"It's definitely going to take a couple of years," Mr Tuddenham said.
"There's still a massive shortage of labour.
