Their classrooms were flooded and some of their HSC work was washed away, but year 12 students from the flood-stricken Northern Rivers region have triumphed in the face of adversity.
One of those students is Reuben Adlington, from Xavier Catholic College, who was one of the state's highest achievers with an ATAR of 98.9.
When the February and March floods struck, Reuben switched his school uniform for his SES uniform and was helping to evacuate and rescue residents in the Ballina area for about a week.
The flood response included the transformation of his school site into a makeshift evacuation centre and then hospital.
He said once the floodwaters had receded, it was difficult to find the motivation to re-focus on the final exams, given the scale of destruction across the region.
"Doing an exam is so different to being out there making an immediate and positive difference to everyone in the community," he said.
"Going back to try to study for the exams ... that was definitely difficult to focus and try to keep motivated."
Reuben said the pressure of exams soon kicked in and he was back to studying with the goal of moving to Sydney to study space engineering.
At Richmond River High School in Lismore, fellow year 12 student Niamh Montgomery was coming to terms with the complete inundation and destruction of their school campus, as well as the loss of their major textiles work.
"I lost quite a bit of work, as did a lot of my peers who do a lot of textiles and similar subjects," Niamh said.
"We all had to kind of downsize what we were originally planning on doing for our projects."
Niamh said many students struggled with disillusionment and finding motivation again following the disaster.
"Seeing our town so destroyed makes it really difficult for us to think of school as something that's as important anymore," they said.
"So everyone was just struggling to really keep up motivation during this year."
Despite starting again from scratch, Niamh went on to achieve an ATAR of 97.7, securing their dream of studying English abroad at Trinity College in Dublin.
'Against the odds'
The Rivers Secondary College, which includes three campuses across Lismore, had 15 students make it onto the list of the state's HSC distinguished achievers.
Principal Chris Williams said it was a testament to the hard work of students and staff who had to share sites, resources and facilities when the Richmond River campus was inundated and deemed uninhabitable.
"They've really just excelled against the odds with all the challenges that were not only thrown at them with the pandemic but then having two of the worst natural recorded disasters here in Lismore's history and they've come out the other side of it," he said.
Mullumbimby High School was also flood-affected but still managed to have 16 students make it onto the list of HSC distinguished achievers.
Principal Greg Armstrong said the results were outstanding, particularly given the circumstances.
"They came back to school on the Monday where the mud was right through the school from the Mullumbimby Creek and they really had nothing," he said.
"It took us a few weeks to clean up [but] we got back on our feet [and] we just went and taught as best we could in the buildings we had left."
