On a Windsor street backing on to the Hawkesbury River, a worn out man in hi-vis carries a box of Who Gives a Crap toilet paper on his shoulder.
“Who gives a crap!” his mate teases. “Who gives a shit!”
Their gang stand in a circle, cruisers and wine glasses in hand. They are doing what they can to keep their spirits up.
Around them, mud-slicked furniture is piled atop discarded belongings – clothes, sheets, barbie dolls.
The remnants of a life upturned again – for the fourth time in under two years.
Blue skies finally hit the region on Friday morning, as strings of emergency vehicles flocked to western Sydney with the flood waters finally receding.
As the water dried, the clean up began.
In Windsor’s main drag, strings of ADF crew walked the streets alongside tired SES volunteers, sat on the banks of the river with fish and chip wrappers and cups of coffee, watching it flow.
The river peaked above the major March 2022 flood level of 13.8 metres on Tuesday, beyond expectation of authorities and many locals.
By Friday morning, it had dropped to 9.18 metres and was falling slowly. The Bureau of Meteorology predicted it was likely to fall below the moderate flood level of seven metres sometime on Saturday.
Down at the riverbank, Melanie Woods was carting mud-drenched belongings from the bottom story of her house, as her children mopped the floors, donned in knee-high gumboots.
A self-described “Hawkesbury-ite”, her family have grown up on the riverbanks for generations.
“We know what it [the river] does, it doesn’t shock us … it is what it is, but it came up very quickly [this time], and we’ve had three this year,” she says.
Boxes of Christmas decorations and camping gear were unloaded on to the street, along with everything too covered in mud muck to salvage.
Her daughter, Elora Kingsbury, sat in their yard, wiping grime off her wedding decorations in the sun.
Kingsbury was married during Covid, when you could only have 11 guests in attendance to a ceremony, and was planning a proper celebration for September. Her bunting had been ruined, but with some dishwashing soap, the candle holders could be salvaged.
“It’s the shock, the fact we’re here again, like, seriously? It’s unprecedented,” she says with a laugh.
A sense of resilience has been echoed by politicians, however there is a grim acceptance of one’s fate among locals who’ve been here before.
Woods and her family have lived in their current property for two years, and have experienced four floods in that time.
They evacuated this week when the river exceeded 13 metres, with no time to move everything upstairs. Woods says this flood has been the worst one yet.
“The last one that went into our house was one in 100 years, well, so is this one. We’ve lost of a lot of my parent’s stuff this time, their memorabilia, but I think we’re tired,” she says.
“We’re disaster weary … I’m sick of it.”
A plaque on the side of the Macquarie Hotel pays testament to the 1867 floods, when water licked at the main street.
The pub had been saved from any damage this time around, but locals agreed July 2022 had been the worst floods in their recent memory.
At Taryn Lewis’s rental property in Windsor South, friends and family flocked to help her cart sodden furniture on to the sidewalk.
Water reached halfway to the ceiling at the peak of the floods, so quickly she and her housemates were woken by emergency services to evacuate while they were sleeping.
“Our back yard flooded, it was horrible, it was coming up the street and then SES told us we had 15 minutes to get out,” she says.
Lewis is staying at her dad’s place in Richmond, and plans to move on from the area as soon as she can.
“We’re cleaning it up now, waiting for the lease to end, and we’re going to move out after that,” she says.
“We got as much as we could out … more important stuff, but all the furniture got ruined. There was already previous damage from the last floods … it’s a lot, it’s too much.
“It’s crazy. I’ve never been through this, we’ve been stuck but not like this. It’s upsetting, to see all of it go.”
