Cobar Rotarians Gordon and Therese Hill have recently been awarded the pres-tigious Paul Harris Fellow award in recog-nition of their ongoing work with the Cobar Drought Appeal.
Gordon said while the drought may be “officially” broken, a good number of local landholders are still in the drought recovery phase.
“Some people still don’t have any income; they haven’t been able to re-stock as stock prices are sky high,” Mr Hill said.
“Some still need help with their day to day expenses and so we’re continuing to provide them with vouchers.”
The Hills were nominated for the award by the Rotary Club of Kogarah who Mr Hill re-ports have been “great supporters of the Cobar Drought Appeal”.
Rotary District 9675 Area Assistant Gover-nor Peter Judd presented the Hills with their award on a recent visit to Cobar and praised them for their ongoing work to help farmers in western NSW that have been affected by the drought.
Mr Hill said when they first set up the ap-peal in October 2018 they thought “it would only be for a couple of weeks”.
Now almost three years later, they have raised almost $1 million to buy fodder, grocer-ies, bottled water, working dog food and fue vouchers to help needy farmers.
The appeal has recently received another $20,000 donation from the Horizons Founda-tion (which brings their contribution to almost $200,000) which Mr Hill said should see them through until the end of the year when he ex-pects they will be able to wind up.
“Hopefully the rain will still keep coming and landholders will be able to recover,” Mr Hill said.
