A vast inland sea is quietly drowning parts of New South Wales, killing crops, ruining paddocks and hurting livelihoods.
It is not unusual for huge swathes of farmland across the state's west to flood but farmers say this event is different from any that has come before.
The La Niña was initially welcomed – 2020 was a bumper year, a relief after a crippling drought.
Now the tide has turned.
Mixed farmer Guy Shoemark estimates "6,000-7,000 acres" (about 2,500 hectares) of his property at Condobolin in the Lachlan Valley, west of Forbes, is under water.
"You don't want to wish it away, and everyone says you don't wish the rain away, but it's getting to the point where you go geez if we could just have a break for five or six weeks, it'd be nice," Mr Shoemark said.
About 20 hectares of cotton from last summer is still in the paddock, because it was too wet to get machinery in to pick.
He is holding out hope the ground will dry up within the next few weeks so he can try to plant again.
"Our summer crop is a big part of our program and I've got zero acres in," Mr Shoemark said.
Floods out here can take weeks to arrive, and linger for months if not years, often as shallow, sluggish brown lakes.
He described the situation as "like a wet drought".
"If I don't get that summer crop in, plus the cost of all this pasture loss, yeah it'll probably set me back a little bit," Mr Shoemark said.
"There's always next year. You kind of get used to saying that out here."
No end in sight
Down the road, farmer Hamish Wald has been forced to load up sheep in between creek rises and more rain.
About 500 lambs have been sent to the abattoir early, because with more rain on the radar, the truck may not be able to return along the damaged and water-logged roads for some time.
Flooding began on part of his property in December 2020.
Unrelenting rainfall has meant the water never subsided there and has since inundated other parts of his farm.
For Mr Wald, the rain was seemingly never-ending.
It had been "an extraordinary long wet event," he said.
This is the third year in a row where Mr Wald has had almost double the average rainfall.
That comes after a devastating drought that began in 2017.
"This flood … has snuck up a lot more like a drought, than a flood," Mr Wald said.
He said it would be years before the land was productive again.
Some of Mr Wald's cropping paddocks went under in January, yet were briefly dry enough to sow a winter crop in May.
Now, those 400 acres (161 hectares) of oats, and 100 acres (40 hectares) of lucerne, are sitting under floodwater.
"We're used to floods … it's part of living here," Mr Wald said.
"Normally you lose crops in floodwater, you pick it back up the next year, it's that give and take, [but] it's three years in a row."
He expected the overall cost to be in the millions, at a time when ideally he would be preparing for the next drought by putting away excess hay or grain.
"We're all very mindful of what's around the corner."
Predicting becomes almost impossible
Further upstream at Bedgerabong, the Brown family can see only some of their inundated crops and they are feeding their sheep by boat.
Water is gushing through their wheat and canola crops while livestock have been moved to the third of their farm which is not inundated.
These farmers are already dealing with or preparing for livestock losses from footrot, flystrike and mosquito-borne diseases.
The Brown family plans for a flood once every seven years but they have now had three flood years in a row.
Melissa Brown said the weather was becoming more and more unpredictable.
"Something's definitely changing," Mrs Brown said.
"You've just got to be on the front foot all the time and be proactive rather than reactive."
But their spirit cannot be washed away.
"We've learned … [to] focus on the things you can control, and yeah, try and stay positive and think of what you have rather than what you haven't got," Mrs Brown said.
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