Weidenbach describes the horror of flooding event

Paul Weidenbach has described the horror of Saturday’s flooding event in Nagambie while also expressing heartfelt gratitude to those that helped save his entire stable of horses.

The 54-year-old joined Toby McKinnon for a special 15-minute interview on SEN Track’s Trots Life, where he outlined the sequence of events that unfolded over the weekend.

Weidenbach and his family were thrust into an emergency situation in the early hours of Saturday morning when water began inundating their racing and breaking property in the Goulburn Valley.

“We woke up to just find ourselves completely surrounded in water and it just turned into mayhem. I’ve never seen anything like it and I hope I never, ever see anything like it again,” Weidenbach said.

“Within minutes we were up to our waist and then we were up to half-way up our stomach in water.”

Weidenbach said about 60 horses had to be rushed from the property, with many finding a temporary home at the Shepparton Harness Racing Complex.

The veteran trainer-driver said while all his horses were saved over the weekend, the floods had sadly taken the lives of about 200 sheep.

“If we didn’t have the help, we would have had over 60 horses just drown… there would have been no other way around it. They would have all just drowned,” he said.

“I’ll be indebted to harness racing people for my life because what we’ve seen on Saturday, you see it on TV and now it’s happened for real. It’s a terrible thing to happen.

“If the Shepparton club didn’t have these stables, I don’t know what all of us people would have done… I know what would have happened – we all would have lost a lot of horses.”

Aldebaran Park neighbours the Weidenbach property in Nagambie, and the stud farm’s principal Duncan McPherson was heavily involved in the clean-up across the weekend.

He spoke about his extraordinary day with Rob Auber after winning the Group 1 Victoria Trotters Oaks with Aldebaran Keepa on Saturday night. You can watch it here.

McKinnon’s special on the floods on Wednesday also included chats with Charlton Harness Racing Club president Joe Thompson and Maree Newberry, the wife of Bunbartha horseman John Newberry.

LISTEN TO WEIDENBACH, THOMPSON AND NEWBERRY ON TROTS LIFE BELOW:

by Tim O’Connor for HRV