‘A family now’: the volunteers helping NSW flood victims six months on

‘It’s brought everybody closer together:’ Rose Hansen looks on as volunteers clean up her flood-damaged Woodburn home. Photograph: Natalie Grono/The Guardian

It was 10 days before Rose Hansen could get back to her Woodburn property after it disappeared under a sea of murky brown water. She knew it was going to be bad – but it was even worse than she expected.

“It was like a bomb hit,” she recounts, sitting in the back yard that in February looked more like a lake than the lush acre block she’d spent seven years cultivating. “There were fish in the back yard, swimming.”