The emotional and financial cost of the worst flooding in a generation is beginning to be felt in New South Wales' central west, and consumers are likely to feel the pain too.
Tens of thousands of hectares of farmland have been inundated by the swollen Lachlan River and its tributaries, in a disaster not equalled in at least 70 years.
It has sparked a warning that produce prices will rise to impact the cost of groceries.
The small town of Eugowra has been among areas hardest hit.
The town, normally known for its murals, is on the banks of the Mandagery Creek, about 70 kilometres west of Orange.
Eugowra farmer Kim Storey sold 450 lambs just days before she was flown out of the flash flood which has been described as an "inland tsunami".
While her livestock escaped, her paddocks did not.
She discovered her front gate and mailbox hundreds of metres from where they should have been when she walked to them for the first time after the flooding.
Her neighbour's gate was also tangled up in her paddock.
Somehow her sowed clover was growing up through a thick coating of silt.
"This should recover just fine, but certainly can't put any stock back on it until I put all the fences back up and pick up all the debris," Ms Storey said.
Infrastructure is set to be among the biggest costs for farmers across the region.
The water which flowed through Ms Storey's property joined the Lachlan River, which flooded hundreds of homes in Forbes.
Slow-moving beast
Farmers downstream at Bedgerabong said the event had left them "in uncharted waters".
About 1,200 hectares, or half of David Gorman's farm, was flooded.
Neighbours scrambled on Saturday to help him helicopter hay to his sheep.
But there was no saving the drowning crops.
"We've had floods before, but [this] was horrific," he said.
Official gauges recorded the flood as reaching a similar height to the 1952 peak.
But there is next to no-one still on the land who remembers that one, and many farmers believe this has been worse.
Mr Gorman said it was an unfathomable disaster that "came right through like a bullet and didn't stop anywhere".
He thinks recovery will be "a bit of a nightmare".
Dairy farmer Alex Bayley watched more than 100,000 litres of milk float down the river in the past two weeks because the tanker couldn't reach her farm.
The water was so deep, and the roads so damaged, that even large tractors had at times struggled to get in and out.
So much of her farm flooded that the only dry place for her 450 cows had been on the public road.
"It's pretty hard, you can't just not milk the cows, they have to get milked twice a day same time every time, and yeah (you) get nothing for it," Ms Bayley said.
Nearby farmer John Cole said he normally produced hay and traded lambs, although there was "nothing to feed them" now.
He said the region had donated fodder to the primary producers of the Lismore region when they were hit by catastrophic flooding earlier this year and some of them were offering to repay the favour.
Mr Cole had no words for the impact of the flood.
"The emotional side of it will kick in down the track once you have a chance to evaluate where you're up to and what's actually in front of you," he said.
Entire region underwater
Reports of livestock losses, massive infrastructure destruction and erosion are beginning to be heard by local authorities.
Parkes Shire Council Deputy Mayor Neil Westcott said he had planted about a third of what he had planned at his farm as the soil was too wet months ago.
"The biggest issue for all us farmers around here is wondering how we get onto our paddocks, whether we can have roads both on our farms, and council roads to get our grain to receival depots," Mr Westcott said.
"With chemical, fertiliser and fuel prices almost double what they were last year, even just planting a crop is a big cost and a big risk."
He said local governments across the state would struggle to respond to the disaster without considerable financial assistance.
Hitting the hip-pocket
Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, who visited Forbes and Eugowra at the weekend, insists the industry will not be left high and dry.
"We will keep coming back to these communities as often as is needed, to make sure that these communities get the support that they need in what is going to be a very long recovery effort," Mr Watt said.
He said the pain of this disaster would be felt from the frontline to the supermarket checkout.
