Months of hard work have been very literally washed down the river for students across the NSW North Coast who had been hoping to ride success at the end of their formal school education.
Lily Shepherd, a school captain in year 12 at Richmond River High School in Lismore, was completing three HSC major works this year in arts, ceramics, and textiles.
All three projects, which were started late last year, were destroyed when flood waters ripped through her school campus in February and March.
Lily had completed 15 different pottery pieces for her art and ceramics subjects.
"They hadn't been fired so they would have been piles of clay [after the floodwater receded]," she said.
"The ones that had been fired weren't salvageable because no one was allowed to go back into the school and get anything.
Lily said she had no proof of how much work she had completed, or its quality, because students were not allowed to use their phones at school to photograph them.
Teacher-owned devices with photos of the works in progress were also destroyed in the floods.
Lily said she felt "pretty distressed" at the thought of trying to complete major works for the deadline in August.
Parent worries at scale of challenge
Kerrie Pimm, the parent of another student at Richmond River High School, said she was concerned the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), which administers the HSC, did not understand the scale of the challenges facing flood-affected students.
"The biggest challenge is to get NESA to really understand what these kids are going through [and] what they've got to go through still," she said.
NESA 'feels very strongly' the need to help
The CEO of NESA, Paul Martin, said it was "being as flexible as possible" to support flood-affected HSC students.
He met with students, teachers, and parents across five flood-affected schools in Lismore, Nimbin, and Mullumbimby this week.
"When you talk to the young people from those schools … what you see is the flood trauma written on their faces," he said.
"NESA feels very strongly that we need to help them."
Mr Martin said students who had lost their major works in the floods should not feel they need to start from scratch.
"In many cases they can't. There are no wood supplies, there's no textiles around," he said.
He said templates were provided to teachers so they could give specific information on each student's circumstance.
"We have to work with the teachers and students to identify what they would have done, where they'd got to, where they were planning to go," Mr Martin said.
Mr Martin also said similar consideration would be given to flood-affected students needing to sit their HSC written exams later this year.
He said they would again speak to teachers to find out how much learning time was lost and if any parts of the syllabus were not covered.
"Then we will provide specific opportunities for those students to do the best they can in the exams," Mr Martin said.
