Almost 98% of Kate and Rod Mildner’s 4,400-hectare (10,900-acre) farm is under water.
Their house sits on one of the small islands that have formed on the Warren property in the Orana region of New South Wales as flood waters continue to rise.
“At the moment our little island is getting very small,” Kate Mildner says. “We’re surviving, that’s about it.”
“[The water level has] dropped a couple inches but with this rainfall prediction, that’s really bad news. The whole community is extremely on edge.”
They recently bought an Argo, a vehicle that can propel itself through deep water, and are using this to reach cattle – without it, she says they would have had to row a boat and then use quad bikes.
“My husband, Rod, got to town today to get some more supplies because we’re likely to be stuck for at least another couple of weeks,” she says. “It took him an hour to go 8km to get down our road in the Argo.”
More than 100mm of rainfall is forecast to fall in Warren over the next week – combined with increasing dam releases, it could spell devastation for farmers like the Mildners who live downstream.
Flooded farms in central-west NSW are bracing for more heavy rainfall after recent floods. Almost 98% of Kate and Rod Mildner’s 4,400-hectare farm is currently under water. ‘We’re surviving, that’s about it,' Kate Mildner told the Guardian. pic.twitter.com/VpMPhjl6h4
— Guardian Australia (@GuardianAus) October 19, 2022
On Wednesday, the NSW emergency services minister, Steph Cooke, says almost every river system west of the divide is now in flood to some extent.
“We are starting to see that rain fall and it will particularly impact our western and our southern communities,” Cooke says.
“It doesn’t take much rain to cause those rivers to rise and rise very quickly.”
Mildner says they anticipate flooding as they are downstream of Lake Burrendong, one of the state’s largest inland dams, which almost ran dry during the drought of 2019.
“Tomorrow there’s a 100% chance of rain but it’s what happens in the catchment obviously as well, which is the really nasty bit,” she says.
Mildner says it is not just farmers who are affected, but the whole community.
“There’s a lot of people’s livelihoods that are going out the window,” Milder says. “I’m very tired, and I’m stressed out.”
As of Tuesday evening, the NSW State Emergency Service had issued 73 flood warnings, of which 13 were emergency evacuation orders.
The Bureau of Meteorology issued a minor to major flood warning for the Macquarie River on Tuesday. The river at Warren is likely to remain above the major flood level (9.00 metres) through to Thursday, with renewed rises possible from Thursday onwards.
One hour’s drive south-east of Warren and 7km from the outskirts of Dubbo is Belinda Nugent’s mixed cattle and sheep farm.
The farm has always been prone to flooding and to mitigate that risk, they built a levee a few years ago around the house.
But when 95mm of rain hit their property on Saturday, enough water came up the hill to their property from another source to fill inside the levee.
“We’ve been here 15 years, and this is the worst it has been for us,” Nugent says.
A video Nugent filmed while surveying the damage shows a water tank floating through what was once her back yard, but now appears to be a lake.
“I’m worried about the next rain,” she says. “I don’t think anything else can get damaged if it floods next week because there’s nothing left to damage… except the house.”
On Monday, Mildner says they had to move the cattle across the flood water to another “island” of high ground because they’d eaten all the feed.
“One got stuck in a tree for a little bit but we managed to get it out,” she says. “It’s always a bit of a frightening experience seeing cattle trying to swim across a big current like that but they got there, which was good.”
At Moulamein in the southern Riverina region of NSW, grower Jeremy Morton says it’s been a long time since they’ve had this level of risk from flooding along the Murray River.
“I’m 55, so I’ve seen plenty of floods, but we’re about 25cm below the highest ever recorded,” the chairman of the National Irrigators Council says.
“I’ve never seen so many rivers all flooding at the same time with all their storages full.
“The really concerning thing is we’ve already got effectively major flooding right now before this water has even turned up, and what we don’t know is how high it’s going to get.”
Closer to the Victorian border, Jesse Taylor, a Deniliquin real estate agent, says the community has banded together to help assist with flood preparation for nearby towns such as Echuca and Moama as they brace for a one-in-1000-year flood.
“Anywhere along that border is disastrous at the moment,” he says. They’re just buggered and going to battle.”
