A Tasmanian family has been united with a long lost sheep seven years after they were separated by devastating bushfires that also burned down their farm.

Prickles, as she is now known, was a little lamb when she became trapped in a 200-acre bush block at the back of the massive property during the bushfires of 2013.

The family had been forced to rebuild 50km of fencing that was destroyed in massive blazes that burned through about 20,000ha throughout the state.

Despite a few sightings, the barefaced merino was unable to make to it back home, until one recent night when the family opted for a change of scenery during Covid-19 isolation.

‘She’s got a lot of dirt and prickles in her wool, which is why we’re keen to get her fleece off.’ Photograph: Alice Gray

“We actually went to the back of our farm for our son’s birthday party … we snuck up the back of the farm to cook a sausage and we saw this big white fluffy thing on the other side of the dam,” Alice Gray, of Dunalley in southern Tasmania, told ABC Radio Hobart, which first reported the story.

After the family had finished their barbecue and returned to their home, Gray said she received a phone call from her husband.

“He gave me a call saying he chased her, leapt on her, and he was holding her down and we all had to go and help,” she said.

Gray found her husband lying on Prickles and it was not easy to load the sheep into the back of a ute.

“She is absolutely round,” Gray told the ABC. “She is a great big fluffy ball of wool. She’s got a lot of dirt and prickles in her wool, which is why we’re keen to get her fleece off.

But she looks very healthy she’s very happy now in with some little friends. But yes, she’s quite a sight to behold.”

The family is now running a fundraiser asking people to guess how much Prickles weighs and Gray said they hoped the good news story could make a difference.

“The most important part to us is that we are raising money for the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, as unlike Prickles, people in camps can’t socially isolate,” she told the Guardian.

It remains to be seen how Prickles will compare to Canberra’s Chris the Merino, who made international headlines after being found wandering and barely visible under a world-record 41kg fleece in 2015. Chris died last last year.