Lightning strike kills PTIC stud cows during Tenterfield storm

A lightning strike from a swift-moving storm front has killed five pregnant stud cows sheltering under a large gum tree near Tenterfield.

The Alumy Creek Angus females, in calf to new United States bloodlines Deep Creek Square Deal and Basin True Grit, had been ear marked to go into the Alumy Creek Angus female sale in late February, and were only pregnancy-tested in-calf on Monday.

Just 12mm fell in the brief encounter with nature on Thursday morning - a welcome drop but not enough - while the same line of storms wreaked havoc on the coast, where fallen trees blocked both lanes of the M1.

At Tweed Heads, on the Queensland border, a tree fell and crushed a car outside a kindergarten.

The storm follows violent weather last week that killed seven cows at Baldry in the Central West, after high winds brought down live electrical powerlines.

During the weekend, more than 200mm of rain dumped on the southern slopes of the Barrington tops - far more than was predicted - in the wake of a complex east coast low that washed out a brand new access road bridge and appeared to drown a grown Charolais bullock on the Chichester River near Bandon Grove.

For Colin Keevers and Lisa Martin, Alumy Creek Angus, disaster is part of farming life, with Tenterfield paddocks burnt by bush fire in October 2023 and twice - February and September - during the brutal drought year of 2019.

"I'm super resilient," Mr Keevers said, with a hint of irony in his voice, speaking from under the shade of that struck tree while an excavator dug a hole in hard ground.

"At the end of the day I choose to farm and sometimes things happen.

"The best we can do is get back into it."