The mission that brought multiple agencies, worried pet owners and an excavator to a South Coast property started with a one-of-a-kind call.

The news that a horse had fallen into a septic tank came through to Peter Collins’ SES Moruya Unit at around 8:30 pm on Tuesday evening (11 March).

The Eurobodalla local commander and his fellow volunteers headed to the property at Jeremadra (about 14 km north of Moruya) in Eurobodalla Shire.

“On arriving, we could see the top of the septic tank had collapsed,” Peter told Region.

“The horse was sitting up – I’d say it was sitting on its bottom – and its head was about two foot out of water.”

NSW SES Moruya Unit was joined at the scene by a vet, as well as members of Fire and Rescue NSW’s Batemans Bay squad, NSW SES Batemans Bay Unit and police officers.

Their initial plan was to haul the horse over the edge of the septic tank, but Peter says the rescuers quickly ran into trouble.

“We did try to pull the horse out by putting around its belly some harnesses and things, but they just kept coming off.

“The horse had nowhere to grip on its rear legs – I suspect its rear legs were probably numb at that stage.”

After their initial attempts to free the horse failed, the rescuers turned to something different: an excavator.

The delicate rescue operation took several hours on Tuesday evening. Photos: Croakers Towing Service Facebook.

It was then Croakers Towing Service, a family-run transportation business based in Batemans Bay, joined in on the efforts.

The team dug around the horse to make some room for it to move, before turning to the machinery.

“We got the excavator to harness the horse up and we lifted it up onto its feet,” he says.

“It came good – it actually stood up and started walking around!”

For Peter, the happy outcome was “much to everybody’s relief”.

“There was a good feeling around, because we were starting to suspect the worst,” he says.

“The horse was definitely getting very tired by the end of the night.

“Basically, it was just putting its head down on the bank and hardly moving there for a while.”

Peter says it’s still unknown how the horse ended up in the septic tank.

“I’d say it was walking and it [the tank] has just collapsed, but that’s only pure speculation,” he says.

“We do get a lot of calls for cattle caught in bogs and things like that, which we do as well.

“But this is the first one where it was a situation like this, where a horse had basically fallen into a septic tank.”

For those keen to put their skills to the test – or wanting to learn new ones helping others – the SES Moruya Unit is currently holding a recruitment drive.

Peter says the unit is accepting people for a range of roles, though they are looking for extra rescue and road crash rescue personnel.

“It’s an enormous amount of skills that [the SES uses], they can specialise in one thing, or go across the board,” he says.

The Moruya SES Unit is holding an open day on 22 March at Moruya Riverside Park, from 9 am to noon.

Original Article published by Claire Sams on About Regional.