Outback New South Wales farmer Barb Arnold has been boating in and out of her property for 10 months.
Home is Bindara on the Darling River, a property roughly 50 kilometres south of Menindee, in the state's remote far west.
"It means if I want to go anywhere it a 9.5km trip downstream to where my vehicle is," Ms Arnold said.
Months of isolation
After back-to-back floods, water in the Darling River and its tributaries have reached levels not seen since the 1970s.
The river is a vital part of the Murray-Darling Basin, which provides water to more than 2 million people and thousands of farms.
Highly publicised and devastating fish kills in 2019 showcased a sick system in need of repair – but now, a handful of years later, sustained flows have breathed new life into the area.
With the Darling bursting its banks over hundreds of kilometres, some residents like Barb Arnold have been forced to boat in and out of their outback properties since last June.
The cut roads have meant Ms Arnold has been unable to sell her goats.
"We were caught out a little bit because how high it was going to come and how high it actually came is a little bit different," she said.
"So I've got goats spread around in different places."
With her homestead surrounded by water, it's also hit pause on her farm-stay business.
"Our farm-stay business has been null and void since the roads were cut to the public," she said.
But Barb Arnold isn't complaining. She's enjoyed the return of a huge variety of birds.
"We've got over 152 different species of birds that come here," she said.
Carp numbers explode
Fish have also returned to the region, including environmentally destructive carp, which have bred in epic proportions, according to NSW Fisheries manager Iain Ellis.
"It's been such a long flood in both the Murray and Darling system, carp have had essentially a non-stop two-year window to breed up," Mr Ellis said.
Mr Ellis believes many carp will die over the coming months as water returns to the river along the Lower Darling.
"They've probably overdone it; there are too many of them," Mr Ellis said.
"They haven't yet worked out in the 50 to 60 years that they've been here that when the water starts to drop, you're going to get stuck and you're going to dry out."
It's not just carp benefiting from the ideal breeding conditions.
Native species like Murray cod, golden and silver perch are thriving, aided by the Menindee Lakes consistently sitting at more than 100 per cent capacity for well over a year.
"When they [the lakes] fill up, they're so nutritious, they're warm. Baby fish that drift into there don't have to fight the current," Mr Ellis said.
"They're full of food so you get this mass survival during flood events or high-flow events."
In recent weeks, residents along the Darling River have spotted hundreds of dead fish as water recedes from the flood plains.
Mr Ellis and his team are making sure there aren't any repeats of the 2019 "blackwater events", when fish suffocated due to a lack of oxygen in the water.
"It's like when you've washed your dog, you pour the bucket out and the very last bit of water's got all the dirt and the muck in it," Mr Ellis said.
"That's coming in as the flood recedes and that adds more carbon to the system, more sediment, more nutrients, which helps feed algal blooms."
The river is 'life'
Barkindji man and artist Eddy Harris grew up on the banks of the Darling River, 150km north of Menindee at Wilcannia.
He said when the river was running, the mood in town changed.
"I go away a lot but I always come home to the river and that's where I get all my strength from, my vision. It's life, yeah," Harris said.
"When it's flowing, we are more active in what we do here in the community, you know black and white."
Harris believes the Darling River, or Baaka as it's known by traditional owners, has seen better days, despite the recent flows.
He hopes communities up and down the Murray-Darling Basin come together to ensure water continues to run into the future.
"We are all in this together. We could sit down and make sure that it keeps flowing," Harris said.
'We're opportunistic people'
Further north, near Tilpa, the McClures are rushing to sow crops.
Two floods in 12 months have put them in a position to plant cereal.
"One was what we call a medium flood, which is a flood that covers probably 10 per cent of our property beneficially," Justin McClure said.
"We've seen an extreme flood where we've had nearly 60 per cent of our property covered in water."
Mr McClure is a fourth-generation farmer on Kallara Station, and his family have grazed the land in far west NSW since the late 1880s.
The wet year left paddocks under water, and also forced the McClures to boat around their property for months.
Now it's receded, there are ideal conditions to grow crops, uncommon in this area.
"We're opportunistic people, and we grow crops when opportunities present," Mr McClure said.
The back-to-back floods should sustain their business for 18 months.
Mr McClure is hopeful they will be able to harvest about 1,600 hectares of crops later this year, along with 800 hectares the next.
Up and down the Darling, the flooding has done wonders for the environment – as well as the people whose livelihoods depend on it.
They're hoping it continues to flow into the future.
Iain Ellis is advocating for a new approach when drier times return.
"We'll probably have to collectively realise that as important that this basin is to keep growing stuff — we need food, we need fibre — we also want the ecology to persist," Mr Ellis said.
"We might have to move a little bit past the whole droughts and flooding rain mentality.
"We're humans, we have an impact and we can accept that and we can turn that corner a bit and I think that's where we're heading."
Watch ABC TV's Landline at 12:30pm on Sunday or on ABC iview.
