{"id":120,"date":"2023-11-30T16:41:04","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thestar.test\/2023\/11\/30\/huge-fundraiser-to-aid-farmers\/"},"modified":"2023-12-02T18:45:29","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T18:45:29","slug":"huge-fundraiser-to-aid-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/blog\/huge-fundraiser-to-aid-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Huge fundraiser to aid farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\t\t\t\tTuesday, September 11th, 2018<\/span> | Posted by Tayla Kershaw<\/a><\/span> \t\t\t<\/div>\n

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Huge fundraiser to aid farmers<\/h1>\n

WHEN Mirboo East residents Brenton and Kat Gration joined on to assist charity group Aussie Helpers in delivering much needed supplies to struggling farmers, little did they know how much of an impact they would have across the country.
An endeavor that started with making several deliveries a week across Victoria quickly turned into supplying more than 50 loads of necessities to desperate farmers as far away as Queensland.
Now Mr and Mrs Gration, owners of Gration Transport, are putting on a fundraiser at Mirboo North on Saturday, September 22 where people can donate anything from money and water, to canned goods and dog food.
\u201cOur plan is to park our B-double truck in Mirboo North and hopefully have people fill it entirely with supplies,\u201d Kat Gration said.
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a whole event. We have the Mirboo North scout group putting on a sausage sizzle, the Mirboo North Pony Club will be offering rides, the local CFA are bringing the fire truck for the kids and there will be live music as well.\u201d
Money donated from the event will be split between Aussie Helpers and the Gippsland Farmers Relief, while supplies will go to the two charities, plus some of the Grations\u2019 struggling customers. While the event is being held in Mirboo North, the Grations are hoping to encompass residents all across Gippsland.
It\u2019s been a whirlwind six months for the Grations, who have appeared on Channel Seven\u2019s Sunrise program and in newspapers across the country for their charitable efforts \u2013 including supplying watermelons to farmers.
\u201cWe came across an opportunity to buy watermelons in bulk and I thought it may be a good idea to feed them to dying livestock,\u201d Mrs Gration said.
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously not perfect, but at the very least the livestock can get some basic nutrients and moisture to survive off for a while. It\u2019s not about fattening the animals up; it\u2019s simply about keeping them alive.\u201d
Mrs Gration said while the watermelons had been useful, their supply has started to dry up, along with other traditional food sources like hay and grain.
\u201cMost people don\u2019t realise just how dire the situation truly is, even with all the reporting on the news,\u201d Mrs Gration said.
\u201cWe are out of hay, out of grain, and pretty much out of watermelons and other vegetables as well. That\u2019s why we are doing this fundraiser, because farmers\u2019 lives depend on it.\u201d
Mr Gration said farmers barely have enough water to offer him a drink.
\u201cWhen I drop supplies off its not uncommon for them to say \u2018I\u2019d offer you a coffee or water but we don\u2019t really have any\u2019. I\u2019ve seen farmers forced to drink and bathe from troughs, and kill off hundreds of their livestock and bury them in massive holes because they simply can\u2019t keep them from starving,\u201d he said.
The work the Grations have done over the previous six months has taken a toll on both their business and their lives, but they say they cannot possibly stop with so many people in need.
\u201cWe\u2019ve forked out about $500,000 of our own money on hay, grain and watermelons,\u201d Mrs Gration said.
\u201cOur customers can\u2019t afford to pay us back straight away but we know that they need our supplies to survive. It\u2019s such a tough position to be in because we still have to pay our bills, but at the same time we know how desperately they rely on our deliveries.\u201d
The Grations are hoping to see around 5000 people turn up to Mirboo North for the event and raise around $10,000 in total. The event will be held 10.30am to 2.30am on Saturday, September 22 at Baromi Park in Mirboo North.<\/p>\n

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Incredible effort: Brenton and Kat Gration of Mirboo East have been hauling tonnes of supplies to struggling farmers across Australia and are now asking for Gippslanders\u2019 help with an upcoming fundraiser.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Short URL<\/strong>: \/?p=25782<\/small><\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPosted by Tayla Kershaw<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ton Sep 11 2018. Filed under Featured<\/a>. \t\t\t\t\tYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0<\/a>. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tYou can leave a response or trackback to this entry\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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Tuesday, September 11th, 2018 | Posted by Tayla Kershaw Huge fundraiser to aid farmers WHEN Mirboo East residents Brenton and Kat Gration joined on to assist charity group Aussie Helpers in delivering much needed supplies to struggling farmers, little did they know how much of an impact they would have across the country. An endeavor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16128,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/16128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}