Three months on from the River Murray flood peak, water still covers farmland in Mypolonga, in South Australia's Murraylands.
The levee breach that flooded the area has reopened, the department responsible for repairing it has not said when the hole will be fixed, and the farmers forced off their land remain uncertain about when they can return.
Buffalo farmer Corey Jones was forced off his land when the Mypolonga levee burst on Boxing Day.
"The flood is definitely not over for us," he said.
"A lot of us still have our farms underwater, and they have been for three months."
Mr Jones has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars handfeeding his buffalo and he wants to sow his grazing land before winter.
It is also a race against time to repair damaged levees.
The mud and the clay barriers are dangerous to work on in wet weather, and the winter rains are fast approaching.
"Once we go into winter, it will be too wet to go on the levee banks and it will be harder to fix," dairy farmer Sam Martin said.
"If it doesn't get fixed soon and we have a high river in spring, we'll be flooded again."
Water pumps sitting idle
To make matters worse, the breach that flooded Mr Jones's farm has reopened.
This means the massive pumps installed by the South Australian government to clear the paddock have been sitting idle, because any water pumped out would just flow back in.
The Department of Environment and Water (DEW), which owns the levees, said it was looking for a short-term solution to patch the breach so that pumping can start.
A second government department, the Department of Primary Industries (PIRSA), has been responsible for operating the pumps.
"We're working closely with the Department of Environment and Water to find some solutions, just a quick fix to stop the water from coming in, then to start the pumps pumping," PIRSA regional support officer Tarsha McGregor said.
But Ms Gregor said it could be a while until farmers were able to get back onto their paddocks.
"If we don't get this done now, we're looking towards September or October before we can start this process again," she said.
Ms McGregor said she hoped work to start patching the breach would start by Monday.
But the long-term future of the levee is unclear, with DEW saying it could not confirm when permanent repairs would begin, or what work would be done, until it has finished assessing the damage to the levee.
"I see this water here as no different to a burnt paddock after a bushfire," Ms McGregor said.
"It's a constant reminder that things aren't normal, that they've got a constant challenge."
'We're very optimistic'
Further upstream at Wall Flat, a different set of government pumps has slowly cleared the water from Sam Martin's dairy farm.
"We've been pumping for almost four weeks now," he said.
"We're hoping in the next couple of weeks we'll have all the water pumped off."
Once the water is gone, Mr Martin can begin the massive task of restoring the soil, repairing fences and digging channels again.
Only then can he start sowing crops to feed his herd.
But Mr Martin said he felt hopeful for better times ahead.
His family has farmed the same land for the last three generations, and weathered more than its fair share of natural disasters.
"After the 1956 flood, they had really good crops the following years," he said.
"So, we're very optimistic."
