Brian Hesketh, operations director at the Victorian Transport Association, persuaded the Victorian Department of Human Services to give departmental funds to help Mr MacCue.

Mr Hesketh acted after reading the story about the bureaucratic brick wall Mr MacCue hit when he tried to gain access to bushfire relief funding to truck donated barley straw and sorghum stubble from his family's mixed farm, "Wilga".

Mr MacCue privately raised enough funds to send five B-Double loads of hay to Victorian fire victims (along with a load of lucerne donated by Mark and Peter Lane of Nullamanna Station, Inverell).

Then he started hunting around for more funding to cover the freight for six more B-Doubles of hay. But what he thought would be an easy task produced zero dollars and many fustrating hours on the telephone unsuccessfully seeking help from the Prime Minister's Office downwards.

Several loads of hay have headed from "Wilga" to bushfire victims in the past week. Mr MacCue said other farmers had contacted him also wanting to donate hay while the federal member for New England, Tony Windsor, and federal member for Parkes, Mark Coulrton, had each offered to pay the transport costs of one load.

Mr MacCue said he was receiving mixed messages about the need for hay in Victoria's bushfire-hit regions with officials telling him one day that no more fodder was needed followed the next day by a call from somebody desperate for hay.

He also said fire-hit farmers seemed to be getting the short end of the straw when it came to the distribution of bushfire relief funds.