“I’m just an everyday bloke, just a bloke with a truck,” he says.

But he’s not just an everyday bloke.

The Stanbridge cattle farmer is the driving force behind one of the most inspiring grassroots movements the bush has ever seen.

Two years ago, as northern NSW and central Queensland were being slowly baked to death by drought, Mr Farrell carted a single truckload of donated hay north.

Last month, the Burrumbuttock Hay Run had grown to 119 prime movers and 168 trailers, amounting to a convoy of hope stretching 88km.

The run has become a symbol for the extraordinary lengths farmers will go to look after their own.

In 10 hay runs over two years, southern farmers have carted about 22,500 squares and rolls of hay north.

The gesture has captured global attention.

The Burrumbuttock Hay Runners Facebook page has attracted nearly 100,000 likes.

A single post was viewed 34 million times in a 15 minute period in the United States.

And Mr Farrell has emerged as an unlikely cult hero.

“The world certainly knows who we are now,” he said.

He said he was motivated not by the attention, but by the tangible difference the runs were making to ordinary farmers.

“It’s absolutely disastrous up there, you have no idea; it’s like being on the moon,” he said.

“There are 400-year-old trees that are turning yellow because of the lack of moisture.

“The farmers are just grateful to know someone still cares.

“And that’s why we do it, they’re our farming cousins.”

He said the runs were also about safeguarding the farm sector for the future.

“It’s all about protecting farms for the third generation,” Mr Farrell said.

“If we don’t do that, we’ll be stuffed in 20 years.”

In a Facebook video that attracted national headlines, Mr Farrell this week made an impassioned plea to the government to give more support to farmers.

“We’re a country that’s forgotten how to look after our own,” he said.

“We have malnourished children in our own country and yet we’re giving $25 million to Syrian aid.

“We should be looking after our own backyard first.”

The next hay run will leave Darlington Point on March 31.