For some, the only sound they associate with Lismore on February 28, 2022, is the relentless artillery of rain on roofs.
It's the gurgle of brown, muddy water as it swallows homes and the crash of appliances in the Wilsons River washing machine.
It's the calls for help from roof cavities and the sputtering of tinnies coming to the rescue.
For Lismore composer and multi-instrumentalist Tilly Jones, the sound of the flood is something expressed best through an orchestra.
Ms Jones has written a musical piece named Resounding, inspired by the destruction she witnessed on that late summer day and the desecration of Lismore's Northern Rivers Conservatorium.
She was encouraged by her uncle Christopher Latham who directs a project called the Flowers of Peace, which measures the cultural cost of war through music and painting.
"I don't think I'll fully ever be able to process it," she says.
"But it did in a way help me to process a bit of the loss of the community, particularly with the conservatorium.
"I was helping there on the first day after the flood when we threw out hundreds and hundreds of instruments including some of my own."
Ms Jones says the first half of the piece tells of the flood, the second half is a tribute to everyone involved in cleaning up the aftermath.
"I think it's a really big challenge to translate something of that magnitude into music," she says.
"[But I wanted] to write a piece to give to my community."
Ms Jones says the end goal is bringing the region's musicians together — with their newly donated instruments — to perform the piece in the renovated conservatorium building.
Hundreds of instruments lost to flood
Anita Bellman stands in the gutted first floor of the Northern Rivers Conservatorium in the Lismore CBD.
She explains that the night before the record-breaking flood, conservatorium staff and members moved everything to the first floor, where it had been out of harm's way during the 2017 flood.
Their efforts, they soon realised — like those of so many others — were ultimately in vain as they watched Wilsons River rise beyond all predicted heights to 14.4 metres on February 28.
The historic and freshly renovated building was destroyed along with hundreds of instruments.
"It looked like a giant had picked the building up and just given it a bit of a shake," Ms Bellman says.
"We probably lost, in total, well over 150 instruments.
"Any instrument you can think of, we lost."
Resounding gives the gift of music
When Rachel Hocking arrived at the conservatorium in Lismore, she was driving a van filled with hundreds of donated instruments.
A pianist and music teacher, Dr Hocking also founded the Resound program which distributes donated instruments to victims of natural disasters.
The initiative started after the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires.
"Often replacing a musical instrument is one of the last things on the list to be replaced because the immediate needs have to be met," Dr Hocking says.
"But for musicians who earn income from it or play it every day, it's a big loss.
"It's something normal they were doing that they've lost."
Dr Hocking says the response to this year's flood disaster on the Northern Rivers has been massive.
"We've had over 800 pledges come through our website and more with people just dropping in instruments as well," she says.
'Coloured lights' in a muddy, dark world
When Stella Rapmund's South Lismore home was inundated by more than a metre of floodwater, she lost her prized Maton guitar.
"I said the three things were my cat and my dog and my guitar that I was hoping to rescue from the flood," she says.
"I got the cat and the dog but not the guitar."
The instrument has always been an important part of her life, including during her recovery from breast cancer in 2019 when it became a means to exercise her arm and hand after surgery.
"I felt guilty that I hadn't rescued it," Ms Rapmund says.
Through Resound, Ms Rapmund received a deep blue guitar that she describes as bringing "coloured light" into her "muddy and dark world".
"Having the music there and the guitar, it's been like Christmas lights coming on," she says.
"I get the guitar out, the lights come on and then when I'm finished the lights go off."
From mud to music to the ears
On the top floor of the newly renovated conservatorium, dozens of musicians sit in a sun-filled room, instruments in hand.
The conductor lifts his baton and the first gentle notes of Ms Jones's Resounding ring out.
The song builds and more instruments chime in, painting a sonic landscape of pouring rain, of panic and alarm, of tinnies coming to the rescue.
Ms Jones is close to the conductor, on bass clarinet.
Ms Bellman is towards the back playing a glockenspiel.
Dr Hocking sits behind a timpani waiting for the conductor's cue and Ms Rapmund is part of a quartet of guitarists on an elevated stage.
The orchestra plays and the music reaches a crescendo.
The melody is one of hope, optimism and change.
