Less than two years ago, the mighty Darling-Baaka River in far-west New South Wales was so drought-stricken that it was all but dry, with boats stuck on the bottom of its empty riverbed.
But now it has been transformed by a major flood that has just peaked at Bourke at almost 12.3 metres and is expected to travel all the way to South Australia.
An incredible 74,000 megalitres of water is flowing through Bourke every day.
The flood has been travelling down from Queensland and north-west New South Wales since November when torrential, persistent rain caused a declared flood disaster that particularly devastated the Narrabri and Wide Bay regions.
But for Bourke the flood brings immense relief, helping the environment recover from the worst drought in living memory.
Boating around the tops of trees
This is particularly important for a region that has missed much of the drought-breaking rain enjoyed by the rest of the state.
"At its worst, the Darling no longer looked like a river. It's metres and metres above that now," Bourke local Anna McCorkle said.
"Now suddenly when we're in the tinny on the river you're on the top of the trees, not down near the trunks anymore.
"There aren't roads and paths to follow anymore — it can be quite disorientating, but it's so refreshing to be on such a huge expanse of water."
She said water changed the mood of the entire community.
"Once things get dry, it's incredibly hard on stock so then on people and the entire community. When the environment suffers, the people do too," Ms McCorkle said.
Bourke was so dry and missed out on so much rain that the district and much of the far west had only started to show real improvement in the past 12 months.
"For Bourke, last year things gradually started to progress," Ms McCorkle said.
"The really difficult thing about coming out of a drought is sometimes rainfall gives a short reprieve but it's not until you've had seasons of rain that things start to turn around.
"We've got summer storms at the moment and the water in the river tends to attract more storms, but they've also been scattered."
Water travelling to South Australia
Water NSW said while this event was much smaller than the last flood in the Barwon-Darling River a decade ago, it was still making a major impact.
"We've had significant inflows since November with 1,800 gigalitres from the Border River, 1,500GL from the Namoi and 600GL from the Gwydir," Water NSW's Adrian Langdon said.
The flood is expected to peak at Louth later this week, at Tilpa at the end of the month, and Wilcannia in the second week of February.
Water has been steadily released out of the Menindee Lakes to make room.
"Over the last month at Menindee we've been able to create some good releases," Mr Langdon said.
"We've got about 400GL of airspace at Menindee so we'll be able to capture the peak of the flow to refill the lake and maintain the flows down the Darling at around 800ML a day while not having a big impact on townships.
"We've been able to fill 50 to 70 per cent of the wetlands along the Darling.
Preparing to be flooded in
At Louth, landholders have had weeks to prepare to be flooded in.
Kim Chandler has been cut off since Friday night when the driveway at her property, Dunlop Station, became inundated.
"We could be cut off, depending on how fast the river keeps flowing, for a couple of weeks. The last time we were cut off was 2012," she said.
"The last couple of floods have been really dirty and muddy, this water is beautiful. It's really clear and blue."
She agreed drought recovery had been slower in far-west NSW.
"The green grass that will come from the flood in those low-lying areas will be a pretty good set-up with feed for the next few months."
But she said the flood brought challenges to graziers.
"We're not a big property, so we don't have the option of putting the sheep onto high country. Things will be OK, but the water has been moving through the gullies pretty fast," she said.
"We need to keep moving sheep, checking on stock, and monitoring the gullies that the river flows up through.
"When the water dries up the biggest thing is making sure your stock doesn't get bogged, some areas will take months to dry out.
