Drenched and anxious, Victorian and Tasmanian communities band together as flood waters rage

Mike Thompson and Steve Nash load sandbags in Latrobe in Tasmania as large parts of the state’s north were inundated by flooding. Photograph: Phillip Biggs/AAP

Emily Buchanan had spent much of Thursday watching the Goulburn River spill over the river flats. She lives at Seymour, in the southern end of the Goulburn Valley, on a house high on a hill overlooking the river as it flows south of the town.

The river spilled its banks at 1pm, Buchanan said, and by 4pm the water was “appreciably” higher.