Nyngan Flood Recovery Stories - Part 1

The Nyngan Weekly is delighted to publish the reflections of Dubbo resident, Peter Woodward, and his photographs chronicling the devastating Nyngan floods (1990).

By Peter Woodward

Because of their length, and the many photos supplied, we will serialise the reflections over the next few weeks.

I have penned a few of the stories that stick in my mind from the Apex working party that took place on the first weekend in May 1990, when we went to assist the town of Nyngan after their flooding event. It culminated with this being the inaugural, and final meeting of the East Nyngan Apex Club.

None of this would have been possible without the call from Russell Penson from Narromine, who was District Governor of Apex at the time, and as it was 1990, there were no mobile phones, emails or web pages that linked all of the Apex Clubs.

Many of the volunteers came from NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. To organise a rescue working party in the space of three or four days was amazing.

With the help of some Nyngan local Apexians like Doug Birks, and Roley and Dudley Beetson, they managed to get us approved by NSW Police, Bogan Shire Council and who knows else, with accommodation and food provided at Canonbar Stud, some loaned tipper trucks, and access to two way radios etc.

Possibly the most poignant memory was that of an elderly couple who saw us coming down the street with the truck and they met us at their front gate. They told us that they knew we were not allowed to enter their property, but their house had been well and truly inundated with water, and they wanted to get their water affected possessions out of the house, so they could start repairs and get clearance to move back in.

This couple had manoeuvred their piano as far as the front door, but they were unable to lift it over the front step of the house due to the weight. We sought permission to help them, and were given it. So, we got the piano onto the front lawn, but we needed to get a front-end loader to help lift it up onto the back of the dump truck to take to the tip. While we were waiting, we got to see some of the other possessions that had to go, including their wedding photos which had been framed and kept on top of the piano. The colour had been washed out of the photos, which looked like they hand been hand-touched by the photographer as they did during the 1940’s. The photo frame retained water at the bottom, and needless to say, the photos were irreparably damaged.

Several minutes later, the front end loader arrived. It went into the front yard and opened the bucket, grabbed the piano and reversed out of the yard and lifted the piano high enough to drop it into the truck. None of the ten or so grown men expected the noise from a piano being dropped from a height of about four metres to be so terrible.

It sounded like every string in the piano broke as it hit the back of the truck, it was the most forlorn, eerie, haunting sound we had ever heard. We looked to the elderly couple as they both held onto each other and cried, and we had to move to support them, as they looked like they would collapse.

That piano with their wedding photos had sat in the lounge room of their house for nearly 50 years, and in one swoop, had disappeared forever. I can still see the look of horror on their faces.