Local farmers feeling the pinch from this unprecedented drought should know their plight has not gone unnoticed in other parts of the country.

Hearing tales of farmers doing it tough in our part of the world, McLaren Vale winemaker Mark Maxwell felt moved to do something about it.

“We were hearing stories about the drought and the people of Orange and Dubbo were coming up on the news as being really in hard times,” said Mark. “We got some people to come along put some money in then ended up with a couple thousand dollars. It's not very much in the scheme of things, but we thought it’s a good thing to do. If every medium sized company in Australia did it, we could go a long way getting a bit of hay from here to there.”

No knowing how to get the money to where it could be used best, Mark brought it up with a Dubbo IGA Manager, who stocks his products.

“It started with me asking how their Maxwell Mead stocks were and then they put me onto Rochelle Ashcroft in Orange.”

Rochelle, whose Let’s Make Better charity distributes thousands of dollars each year to local causes, decided the money might be used by Rotary Club of Orange Daybreak, who are partnered with Heifer Station Wines for the recent Feast for Farmers fundraiser.

The donation brings the total raised through the Feast for Farmers to nearly $42,000.

“It is a great way of getting the money to the farmers,” said Rochelle, who passed on the money to Rotary Daybreak on Friday.

“We are really grateful to Mark for putting a bit of money out this way.”