In the tiny Northern Rivers town of Woodburn, nestled in a bend of the Richmond River, they know all about floods.
This time a year ago, a satellite image showed the town of 750 people and a handful of streets were a sea of green — lush lawns surrounded by crops of beans and sugar cane.
Five days after the 2022 floodwaters peaked on March 2, the town was a sea of muddy water.
Last week, the town again bore the brunt of La Niña — a brutal weather system that has been running for two summers and brought record rains.
It has seen NSW record its sixth-wettest year on record, with one-third more rain falling across the state than normal.
The rain drove a flood the likes of which Woodburn had never experienced before.
This is the story of how it happened.
Rapid flooding, even for a community used to inundation
Kylah Grainger lives in the regional town with partner Clem McGeary and two-year-old son Jack.
She says when Lismore, 30 kilometres upstream on the Wilsons River, starts to flood, it's time to prepare.
"I think usually when Lismore floods, Woodburn floods a couple of days later, but nothing like this," she said.
Floodwater broke the levee in Lismore at 5am on Monday morning.
Upstream of Lismore, in the towns of Tunchester and Rock Valley, 437 millimetres and 503 millimetres of rain had fallen in the 24 hours before.
These totals were far in excess of the 250 millimetres that the Bureau of Meteorology had warned would fall in some areas.
An intense low-pressure trough that had dumped a third of a year's rainfall on Brisbane had moved down the NSW coast.
The residents of Woodburn were totally unprepared for how fast the wall of water flowing down the Richmond River would inundate the town on Monday night.
At 5:35pm on Monday, Ms Grainger and Mr McGeary got a text from the State Emergency Service (SES) ordering them to evacuate.
Water was already flowing into the downstairs level of their home and they would have had to walk through floodwaters to escape.
By 1am, the water had reached the second storey and Ms Grainger says the SES had stopped rescuing residents.
By then, the only way to get around the town was in a boat.
They were rescued, like many flood victims, by neighbours in a tinny.
"We flagged them down. The dog, the cat and my partner and myself got into the boat and went up to the school," she says.
When she travelled by boat back to her home on Tuesday morning, she found most of the house underwater.
Fifteen kilometres upstream at Coraki, the Richmond River had peaked at 3am on Tuesday, above the previous record set in 1974.
The river at Woodburn would not peak until 11pm on Tuesday night when it reached 7.17 metres, smashing the previous record flood height of 5.42 metres set in 1954.
It would take seven days for the water to subside enough for Woodburn residents to survey the damage.
Ms Grainger and her partner finally went back home on Sunday, a week after they were evacuated.
The scene they encountered was devastating.
They waded into the bottom level of their home through chest-deep water to begin cleaning the top level.
"The fridge was tipped over on its front, so we had to lift the fridge without letting all the food fall out," she says.
"That was horrendous, after seven days with no power. It's really disgusting."
By Wednesday, the water had subsided enough to throw all their ruined belongings out the front of the house to be collected.
"It just looks like a war zone in Woodburn. It's horrible," Ms Grainger said.
"It looks like something out of a movie. It looks like the town has been bombed."
All around the town is a sea of mud. There is no green grass.
With La Niña forecast to persist until May, it could be months before the rain finally dies out.
The destroyed home is particularly devastating for Ms Grainger and her partner, who lost their son William to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome last year — a month before his third birthday.
Mr McGeary had renovated the house after their loss and they had treated themselves to new furniture, which has now had to be thrown out.
"To see it all come tumbling down again after we've just had our whole world fall apart. It is very overwhelming and disappointing," Ms Grainger said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared the floods a national emergency on Wednesday, with $3,000 available for residents in the Richmond Valley, Lismore and Clarence Valley local government areas.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Kylah, Clem and Jack rebuild their home.
Satellite imagery was provided by Geospatial Intelligence Pty Ltd and Airbus DS.
