Lily Peake would usually be seated in her bedroom doing homework in February, but schooling this year for the Rochester Secondary College year 11 student looks a whole lot different.
Gone is the bedroom she feels familiar in — replaced with a cabin her family occupy at the Rochester South temporary village set up for families displaced by October's floods.
Lily, 16, and her family, including parents Brett Peake and Danni Wells, and younger sisters Jade, 11, Willow, 6, and Ivy, 4, are just one of 138 people living in cabins and calling the site home.
"It's kind of annoying, really," she said.
"It's hard to get settled in and stuff like that with everything that's going on."
Sleeping patterns are unsettled because of stress, and the morning now includes a walk to the food hall for breakfast.
There's also the nagging unknown that drives the stress, including not knowing when insurance claims will settle and if, or when, the family will be able to return to the family home.
"It'd [usually] be a walk to school or a short drive, and now having to take a big drive or a bus ride, which I never really do, it's a lot different, and it's a big change," Lily said.
"It's going to be pretty hard to study being so close to family and having sisters and parents near you. I'm finding that not having my own space is a bit hard.
"Back at home, I'd have my own room and have everything else, really, that a normal person would have."
The ABC understands about 80 per cent of Rochester families are yet to move back into their homes as they wait on insurance outcomes and builders.
Tight squeeze on school site
It has been an emotional back-to-school feeling this year for many Rochester families, with the floods that inundated town also damaging school buildings.
The primary school building awaits repair so portable classrooms have been installed on the town's high school site.
Primary school and kindergarten children will all be based on the secondary school site for term one.
"Just to see the kids in their uniforms, back running around, it gives families a bit of hope," Rochester Primary School principal Kate Whitford said.
"There's not one building that wasn't affected. We don't have anything that we can access.
"We've got one little standalone building that they're trying to get ready for us. Hopefully, we'll have that in a couple of weeks."
Ms Whitford said she hoped to have students back on the primary school site by term two but it would likely be a staged return.
Challenges remain for students
Rochester High School principal Melissa Gould said it was exciting to welcome students back, but challenges remained for displaced families, including those who had to travel long distances to get students to school.
"They're really committed to keeping them enrolled in Rochester to keep that connection for them," she said.
"We've got a number of staff who are not back in their homes too, so there's a level of complexity around bringing the school back together.
"But to have our school back together provides that familiarity and hope as we move forward."
She said the school was exploring ways to provide more space for students to do homework after school, particularly for students living in caravans and temporary accommodation.
"A lot of our year 12's houses were damaged during floods, so that's become an issue for us, how we provide spaces for students to do homework outside of school hours," Ms Gould said.
But the principal said there were still a number of elements to sort out and source in order to provide a decent space for students.
"We're still lacking shade, so we're really conscious about our students being out in the sun all day, and our PE [physical education] classes out in the weather," Ms Gould said.
"Those types of things we're still ironing out."
