The smell of charred wood and scorched earth still hovers over Lindsay Park.
A blackened gum tree, clinging on to its brown, dead leaves, sits just 30 metres from the property’s trainers’ hut, serving as a daily reminder of the firestorm that almost wiped the Hayes family’s Euroa farm from the map.
Not that J.D. Hayes needs reminding.
As he and his brothers, Ben and Will, prepare their horses for Saturday’s Australia Cup meeting at Flemington, he can recall in vivid detail the trauma of the January bushfires.
Almost three months on, he tells of an unstoppable blaze that killed seven horses, destroyed Ben’s house, and wiped out a smaller stable complex and hay shed. Incredibly, he says it could have been worse.
“We were lucky,” J.D. said. “It hit 95 per cent of our farm, but the irrigation saved our main stables and our tracks. We had 350 horses on the property… only seven didn’t make it.”
His first encounter with the fire came on Thursday, January 8.
He and twin brother Will returned to Lindsay Park, 17 kilometres south of Euroa, from training duties in Melbourne because the property was under threat. Ben, their older brother, was on the Gold Coast for the Magic Millions sales.
By that stage, the fires had taken hold. The Hume Freeway had been closed, and properties were being evacuated.
“We got to the turn off, literally when you come into the farm, and we got the call from the CFA saying you’re about to be burnt,” J.D. said.
“There was just smoke. Like, I’ve never seen smoke like it. It was unbelievable.
“You can’t explain it. It’s horrendous … like a war zone. The wind and the sound, like, you can hear it burning. And that’s when we had to evacuate.”
It was the beginning of 48 hours of hell.
Luck, and bravery, helped the Hayes family on that first day. Fifteen CFA trucks fought the blaze at their boundary before a sudden wind change sent it in a different direction. Lindsay Park had been spared.
But the sense of relief barely lasted through the night. On the Friday, the firestorm would return to finish what it had started.
“Friday was that horrific day. There were 90km/h winds and it was 45 degrees. It was just a perfect storm,” J.D. explained.
As fires raged across the district, spitting thousands of threatening embers into the air, the Hayes family, including parents David and Prue, who had returned to Australia from Hong Kong for a wedding, moved frantically around the farm, putting out spot fires. They were helped by a number of staff.
“But because of the forecast and the amount of smoke, and the fire front that you could see, we had to leave,” J.D. said.
“So we fuelled up all the generators, turned the sprinklers on, and that was the worst feeling of all, leaving on Friday afternoon, just thinking that this could be it. It was just terrible.”
The Hayes family waited in Shepparton, desperate for updates.
“The CFA were saying that our Criterion stables were gone, Ben and Grace’s house was gone, and we’re just hoping that they weren’t saying that the main stables were gone,” J.D. said.
“The CFA were amazing. They were defending right to the last minute, but if they thought the main stable complex was going to catch fire, they were going to let all those horses go. That would have been chaos.”
As it was, more than 100 horses were still in paddocks on a more sheltered side of the farm when the family evacuated.
“When we arrived back on Friday night, about 9pm after the fire front had passed through, Mum, Dad, me and Will came in and there were just loose horses everywhere,” J.D. said. “The fire had burned all the fences.”
What struck him, even as the fires lit up surrounding hills, was the calm demeanour of their horses.
“When the fire had come into the paddocks, the horses had jumped the fire front to the burnt ground. It was incredible,” he said.
“Then, in the pitch black, we had to catch as many as we could. You would walk into a paddock, and you’d only have one head collar and there would be 15 horses, and they would all just follow you out. It was surreal.”
What happened the following day still makes J.D. shake his head. With no fences on the farm, they had to relocate 130 horses to a more secure property. By 7am on the Saturday, the trucks started rolling in.
Troy Corstens, the head of the Australian Trainers’ Association, had helped organise a convoy of floats – trucks from the likes of Ciaron Maher and Chris Waller down to smaller country trainers such as Craig Weeding – to pick up the Hayes’ stock. Even suspended jockey Ben Allen drove a vehicle to help.
Inglis then opened up their sales complex at Oaklands Junction to stable the horses.
“The racing industry is an incredible industry,” J.D. said. “When the chips are down, people come and help.
“We had every horse that we needed to get off the property gone by about 10am. In three hours, we were able to evacuate the farm, which was incredible.”
After running on adrenaline for 48 hours, J.D. said he fell into a deep sleep. But outside of that, there was little time for rest. Business, he said, continued as usual. The racing did not stop.
“The clean-up is just as stressful because you’re dealing with insurance, we had all the fencing gone, we had 130 horses that need to be relocated from Inglis to another farm, and then we had runners on the Saturday,” Hayes said.
There was personal loss, too. Ben and his wife, Grace, who had a baby girl in October, had to cope with losing their house.
“They’d freshly renovated,” J.D. said. “They got two nights in it. They had a lot of their personal items in there – all gone.
“We had all the Better Loosen [Up] memorabilia in there as well, and all the C.S. Hayes memorabilia. So all Pa’s stuff is gone. Like photos of him training 10 winners in a day.”
But as green shoots continue to spring up across Lindsay Park, the Hayes family have emerged from the ashes.
They are rebuilding fences, have plans for a new Criterion stable and are preparing to build a new home for Ben and Grace.
“You always think, ‘Oh, it won’t happen to us’,” J.D. said. “But we’ve lost that mentality now because it’s happened twice in 10 years. We just get prepared now.
“It could have been much worse, but our system stood up to save as many horses as we did, and save the property as well.”
This week, the brothers have been busy preparing their runners for Saturday’s Flemington meeting, including smart two-year-old Gin Twist, Godolphin sprinter Pisanello and Australia Cup fancy Apulia.
“He [Apulia] won the Perth Cup on the first of January, and then we burnt down seven days later,” Hayes said. “Winning on Saturday is not beyond him.
“We’ve put the blinkers on. He’s a very good Flemington horse, and he put the writing on the wall that he’s looking for 2000 metres. We’re quietly confident that he’s not going to let us down.”
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