Fire horses face fight to survive

Cheryl Bromely with Little Gem, one of the six horses that was badly burnt during the fire near Lakes Creek School on Saturday.

Megan Lewis

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Rockhampton bushfire

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Qld urged to prepare for bushfires

WITH the climate creating dryer conditions once more in south-east Queensland, the threat of bushfires this season is very real.

ROCKHAMPTON'S Cheryl Bromley is praying her family's six horses survive after they panicked and raced through the main front of Saturday's wild bushfire at Lakes Creek.

“They are not good, but we're praying,” Cheryl said from the Bromley's 28 acre property at the end of Mackay Street yesterday.

The horses' plight has captured the interest of the local community.

A handful of people had tried to cut through a fence to help the animals escape as the fast-moving fire approached.

However, the horses panicked and bolted back through the flames.

After reports in some media that they perished in the blaze, Cheryl was yesterday keen to let people know they'd got through - but only just.

At the moment the horses are all heavily sedated with painkillers from the vet and Cheryl has gone through tubes of cream for sores to treat them.

“We think two of them will be fine,” Cheryl said.

“We are trying hard to keep them all alive and we're not writing any of them off yet because we just don't know.”

She said the horses - Little Gem, Suzie Q, Gidget, Gemma, Mingo and Laura Pikachu - were well known in the neighbourhood and a favourite of many young children who loved to pat them as they walked along Cooper Street.

Ironically if the horses had stayed near the house area they would have been okay with the fire only reaching the fence at one end of their area.

Cheryl said the family's home was saved but the whole area was burnt out.

She said a lot of kangaroos, wallabies and wild deer had kept the grass around the house cropped short.

“I think that is what saved the house,” she said.

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