With thousands of hectares of farmland burnt, countless head of cattle dead and tonnes of crops scorched, bushfires have brought chaos and suffering to farmers in northern New South Wales.

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A fire in the Clarence Valley at Baryulgil has burnt most of the grazing land on Yulgilbar Station, owned by Baillieu and Sarah Myer and home to a renowned Santa Gertrudis stud.

General managers Rob and Lorraine Sinnamon, with a team of up to 20 people, have been fighting fires on the property adjacent to the Clarence River for the past week.

"I can't talk highly enough about how fantastic my team's been, and our fencing contractors and neighbours and friends that have pulled together," Mr Sinnamon said.

They managed to save the historic Yulgilbar Castle — built in the 1860s — as well as protect a number of other homes and buildings on the 14,000-hectare property.

"There were three houses with fire around them all at once, including the castle and we're fortunate it hasn't been damaged, a lot of gardens around it have been," he said.

Yulgilbar Station has been hit hard by the fire emergency. ( Supplied: Rob Sinnamon )

The firefighting chopper, known as 'Elvis' repeatedly took water from the Clarence River as the flames raged around Yulgilbar.

Unfortunately an estimated 10,000 hectares of grazing land has been burnt along with a significant amount of fencing.

"We're fighting very hard to keep what we have left and at the same time to get feed to cattle with this ongoing drought," Mr Sinnamon said.

There are about 5,000 head of cattle on the property, and Mr Sinnamon hopes livestock losses will be minimal.

The station desperately needs to find agistment for 3,000 cattle because they have no feed left..

"The challenge we're having is that we've got fires burning from one end of the station to the other and huge distances to spread our resources over, so we haven't had time to really get a full assessment on it," he said.

"We have lost a number of top-quality stud cattle that were caught in a smaller paddock, which is certainly heartbreaking."

Brothers' banana farms burnt to the ground

The fire hitting the Nambucca Valley has two destroyed everything in its path on banana plantations at Taylors Arm, owned by the Spear brothers.

Stephen and Michael grow bananas on adjacent farms where crops, packing sheds and other infrastructure have gone up in flames.

Stephen Spear said it would take more than a year to return to full production and until then that meant no income.

This banana plantation at Taylors Arm, west of Macksville, was destroyed by fire in 2019. ( ABC Rural: Claire Wheaton )

"All the bananas have been burnt," he said.

"I've also had avocados in and I think I've only got about 1 per cent of my avocados that haven't been touched by fire at the moment."

Mr Spear said that he and his brother also both lost their packing sheds.

Stephen Spear holding a bunch of bananas wrapped in burnt plastic. ( ABC Rural: Claire Wheaton )

"They've just collapsed in, so they'll just have to be bulldozed away and new packing sheds put in," he said.

"The cost to me out of production is no income for 12 months. I've already been to see my local credit union about my mortgage so it's pretty serious.

"We will have some fruit before 12 months because there's probably suckers growing up there at the moment that are probably 10-foot high that we might get a bunch off."

Between the two of them the Spear's lost about five hectares of bananas.

Mr Spear is also the treasurer for the Australian Banana Growers' Council and was at a board meeting in Brisbane when the fire ripped through his farm.

"I had two other brothers here in the area and they said it was the most terrifying situation they've ever been with regard to fire," he said.

"My brothers said there were 1,000 firefighters and 100 fire-bombing aircrafts there.

"But you couldn't stop it, it just went too quickly and burnt extremely hard.

"Even the big mountain behind us, which is the Whip Mountain, you can see between the trees, the top of the ridge on the Whip Mountain, which has never ever happened before."

Fire on Stephen Spear's banana farm destroyed his packing shed. ( ABC Rural: Claire Wheaton )

'It was a firestorm we shouldn't have been in'

Carolyn and David Duff thought they were prepared for the fire that hit their property at Toorooka, north-west of Willawarrin in the Upper Macleay Valley.

"We had tractors and spray rigs and water and generators, we had what we thought was enough to protect us," Mrs Duff said.

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"Looking back now and after going through it, we were never ever going to stop it. It was igniting 12 kilometres in front of the fire.

"We had embers and we had fire racing at the house and we were protecting the house as best we could, but the pump was down on the river actually got burnt so the generator wasn't any good to us.

Fire destroyed farmland, machinery and sheds on the Duff property at Toorooka. ( Supplied: Carolyon Duff )

"I breed Labradors. I had 12 of them. I just ran out and opened all their gates and ran to the house with them, locked them in the house, then went back trying to put out the fire around the house.

"We are an open country, there's nobody around us. We have no feed because we're in drought."

The Duffs say they were lucky to escape alive.

"There were 40-foot flames coming over the big shed at us, I don't know how we survived it.

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Dave has said to me that he thought he was going to die," she said.

"I can't believe how we are alive because it was a firestorm that we shouldn't have been in.

"We thought we were prepared. We know the country, we know fires, we are prepared. And we have never seen anything like this ever. It is catastrophic and you will never beat it.

"If you're insured, even if you're not insured, just go. There are people that have lost everything. There are 20 houses that I know of right now that I can see from the round that have burnt to the ground."

The couple did manage to save their homestead and 400 head of cattle when the fire burnt through 1,000 hectares of farmland but they lost a cottage, machinery, vehicles and working dogs.

"We have lost two headers, bulldozers, spray rigs, tractors, bikes, whatever you can think of to farm with we've lost," Mrs Duff said.

"Unfortunately my husband has lost six working dogs which is devastating and he's having a hard time getting through that, and that's when I come unstuck."

A fire on their property at Pee Dee further up the valley past Bellbrook also burnt feed and three sheds.

Valuable farm machinery was destroyed by fire on the Duff beef and soybean property in the Upper Macleay Valley in 2019. ( Supplied: Carolyn Duff )

Fast moving fire wipes out sawmill at Forbes River

Gemma and Brett Porter's property is at the top Forbes River, between Walcha and Wauchope, where they run 400 head of cattle and operate a sawmilling business.

The sawmill was completely destroyed along with everything in it.

Beef producers and sawmill operators Gemma and Brett Porter decided to stay and defend their property from the fire. ( Supplied: Gemma Porter )

Most of their 810 hectares is destroyed, but their home and livestock, including horses, were spared.

Mrs Porter said the scene they faced on Friday afternoon was like 'Armageddon'.

"We've always fought the fire the same way because they're so predictable and that was our fire plan because that's the way it's worked for the past 50 years," she said.

"It just started throwing what we call fireballs. It was coming down and joined another fire and those fireballs were landing 10 kilometres away.

The destruction of the family sawmilling operation will have an ongoing impact on, not only the Porters, but their staff.

They employ five people plus a mechanic, freight drivers and logging crews.

Their entire log stock was also burnt.

"It's a complete write-off. There is not much left," Mrs Porter said.

"Thursday we had a sawmill business that employed five people full-time and Friday at nine o'clock we had nothing."

A number of staff are out of a job after fire destroyed the sawmill on the Porter's cattle property at Forbes River. ( Supplied: Gemma Porter )

As for the cattle and horses, no-one understands how they survived the fire.

Mrs Porter put it down to instinct.

"Our cattle out in the paddocks, 260 head of cattle, they put themselves all together in a sharp gully and the fire went over the top of them," she said.