Australia's farmers count cost after bushfires wipe out livestock

In the wake of ferocious bushfires that tore through Kangaroo Island, local farmer Rick Morris has endured the gruelling task of burying 400 sheep killed when most of his sprawling property went up in flames.

"It puts it in perspective to say that we're one of the lucky ones," he said. Australia is reeling from bushfires that since September have claimed 28 lives, including two on Kangaroo Island, and razed 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of land -- an area larger than South Korea or Portugal.

Vast swathes of the burned land were used for grazing cattle and sheep, and officials believe the livestock toll exceeds 100,000 across Australia -- including at least 43,000 on Kangaroo Island alone, where farmers like Morris endured three blazes in just 10 days.

"We faced the full wrath of Mother Nature," he told AFP at his 930-hectare (2,300-acre) farm.

"The fire (swept) from the south side to the north side of the island and took no prisoners between... I'm amazed there were not more people killed." Faced with the scale of the disaster, Australia's army has deployed 3,000 soldiers to assist in bushfire-affected areas.

Here, the defence force flew in firefighters from the mainland and dropped bales of hay from helicopters to farmers isolated by fires in the island's western reaches. Brigadier Damian Cantwell, the joint bushfire task force commander for South Australia state, said he foresaw a "long road ahead" for Kangaroo Island.

"I've seen a level of destruction which is still surprising me now," he told AFP.

"There's a lot of farmers that are in distress, a lot of community members are struggling, some families have lost everything, and they're struggling to find out where they can move forward from here," he said.

"There's no end date assigned to this mission, and it's very important that there's no sense of anyone... thinking about when this is going to end."