‘Filling potholes with rocks’: the $2bn task to repair NSW’s flood-damaged roads

A ute veers to the opposite side of the road to avoid a large pothole on the Eugowra-Parkes road in Central West NSW. The 2022 floods damaged an estimated 13,000km of roads in regional NSW with a repair bill of more than $2bn. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

When torrential rain hit the Byron Bay hinterland in 2022, the ground began to slip away. While lower communities in the northern rivers faced one-in-1,000 year floods, in Upper Main Arm there were landslides big enough to bury a house.

Both destroyed the roads.