General News
27 June, 2025
Nyngan Flood Recovery Stories - Part II
As we entered the town the first time, the motel was on the right hand side of the road.
By Peter Woodward
We looked at a Toyota Landcruiser “Troopie” that had a very unusual gouge right through the roof. Furniture, bedding and anything in the top floor of the motel was being dragged out and thrown onto the footpath, so we stopped to assist and start our first load to the tip from there. When we asked about the gouge in the roof of the Toyota, apparently it was from the SES rescue boat that had taken people off the first floor landing at the motel in the early hours of the morning.
The propeller had cut through the roof as they approached the landing. It was impossible for us to imagine how deep the water was considering the distance from the river, probably about two kilometres away.
As we came down the Main street, we got to the National Bank and once again required the front end loader, as we had to remove all of the old paper and cardboard ledger type pages that had been inundated and soaked in water for many days. The mess was just disintegrating and there was no way it could have been saved. We hoped the bank had other forms of records for their clients.
There was a house that we were carting stuff away from, and the owner also needed us to help him carry his refrigerator out.
An electrician from the Macquarie County Council was checking his power points to assess whether his power could be restored. We were amazed as the electrician unscrewed the power point at 1.8m above floor level, and water started flowing out of the cavity and continued for about a minute. The owner was told that meant he had at least another week before his wiring would be dry enough to reconnect electricity to the house.
We arrived at the chemist shop to help remove all of their damaged goods. Their plan had been partially successful in limiting the amount of flood water entering the shop. They had placed every disposable nappy they had around the door frame in the hope it would absorb water as it tried to get in.
It was unbelievable how much water the nappies had soaked up and once again, the front end loader was needed to lift the weight of fully loaded nappies into the back of the truck, after we shovelled them into the bucket of the loader.
Mid-morning came and a couple of the blokes were a little bit seedy: a few drinks the night before, not a great deal of sleep, and into action very early in the morning had a few of them not feeling very well at all.
As we were sweeping stuff off the shelves into bags, one of them very innocently asked without thinking, “I don’t suppose you would have any Panadol floating around in here would you?” Twelve or so people nearly fell to the floor laughing so hard, before he realised what he actually said.
We then got to the newsagency and were asked to go to the back lane behind the shop as the storage shed needed to be emptied. Every carton had dissolved and there were bottles and cans of drink everywhere, mixed with everything else that had been enclosed in cardboard. Every drink and bit of food had to be taken to the tip and opened and tipped on the ground as it had all been exposed to the sewerage that had entered the town when the levee had broken.
It seemed we were making the problem worse by pouring out all of the drinks onto what was already sodden ground, but it was necessary to make sure no one attempted to eat or drink any of the contaminated foodstuffs.
It was a similar situation with furniture and fittings.
If the item had been in contact with water contaminated with sewage, it was taken to the tip to be burnt, or broken up to prevent looting. It seems wasteful, but no one had the time to spare to disinfect housefuls of furniture.
Having said that, we were very generously fed all day with stuff that had been donated for the working party.
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