The 50-year-old has three properties in the Bellbrook region and the bushfire burned through more than 1500 acres of his land, including 1080 of 1200 acres on one property.

Mr O'Neill, who has around 800 cattle on his land and began using molasses and hay to feed his herd four months ago, is now forced to increase the fodder load.

"The fire burned most of the rough grass we did have and the good grass we had in the bushy area. Now it's just black ash and the cows can't eat it," Mr O'Neill told the Argus.

"I had already started to feed the cattle for the past four months and I recently ran out of molasses so I had to swap and feed them hay."

The Carrai East bushfire remains active and has burned through more than 118,000 hectares. It caused the most havoc on Friday November 8 until Wednesday November 13.

Despite the fire reaching an emergency level warning and a recommended self-evacuation put in place for people living west of Kempsey, Mr O'Neill and his family stayed to protect their home.

"The cattle country had barely any feed on it so it doesn't burn furiously, it's the bush that burns and we are quite protected from the bush at our home so we stayed," Mr O'Neill said.

"Someone said to me that the locals would be accustomed to fires up this way and well we are, but not to the extent of this fire. It was a once in a generation super fire that tore through almost everything in its path."

The fifth-generation farmer said the majority of the damage to his properties occurred on the destructive Tuesday November 12.

"It was just such a hot and windy day, you pretty much just had to stay on your place and be ready to protect it if you had to. There was nothing you could go out and do," he said.

"The strong winds spread the fire quickly and it burned most of our country."

While the loss of grass on his paddock and in the bushy areas was devastating for Mr O'Neill, the extra hours used to feed his cattle and repair damage will prove most costly.

The father-of-two will have to fix the fences on his properties, an expensive and timely process.

"You can do a quick fix on the fences but some need to be replaced properly and you will spend anywhere from $15,000 to $18,000 a kilometre to fence a property," he said.

"It's a cost for the product you buy but it's more of a cost for the time you put into doing it. I work off farm a bit doing fencing and once you start having to feed the cattle, your days start to disappear and you can't take too many jobs on.

"But I am going to have to take more jobs on to cover the costs of the fire."

In an attempt to maintain the number of cattle Mr O'Neill owns, the cattle breeder will relocate a large number of cows from the Bellbrook region to less affected properties down river.

"We are trying to sell some cattle and shuffle cattle around to other properties. It's dry down there but nothing compared to up here," he said.

"We are shuffling things around, we moved a load a couple of weeks ago, one on the weekend and will move another load this week, but it's full down that end as well.

"The pressure is on the land but we just have to squeeze them in. The feed will run out down there too but at least this is the time when the country should go pretty good if we get rain."

The additional financial burden on Mr O'Neill has him hopeful decent and consistent rainfall will break the drought soon.

"It's impossible to estimate how much more the fire will cost us because we don't know when it will rain. It could be next week or it could be in February, we don't know yet, we just have to make a plan to start contingencies," Mr O'Neill said.

"The blady grass is trying to shoot but it probably won't do much more now until we get some rain. The country is ready to grow but it just needs the moisture.

"If it doesn't rain in the next few weeks we will have to sell more but you just don't know, we can't lock in a plan because because it changes every week and you have to adapt your plan to that."

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To add to the dire circumstances, the Macleay River became stagnant at Bellbrook last month and approximately 17,000 litres of water is trucked from the Steuart Mcintyre Dam to the town each week.

"The river has dried up again, it's only done it three times since I have been here and the drought is probably worse than it was during the 1994 drought, and now the fire is just another hit on top of that," Mr O'Neill said.

The Kempsey Airport has recorded 321mm of rain in 2019 while its average rainfall to November is 1044mm.

Mr O'Neill claims a similar discrepancy has been experienced 54km to the North-West of Kempsey in Bellbrook.

"We have only had 340mm for the year and we could have anywhere from 40 to 50 inches in a year," he said.

"We have had a lot of dry times over the years but this is bad, this is up there with as bad as it gets."

"One of my paddocks near Bellbrook is starting to run out of water so that's another problem. I have three dams on the property that was burnt out, one is dry, one barely has water and the other is in a good state but now it's basically the only water supply."

Mr O'Neill claims if there isn't a substantial amount of rain by March then the next growing season for his cattle will be affected for the third straight year.

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