Pictures flood my phone of waters serenely enveloping the plain that surrounds my village in north Wagga Wagga. Along with about 300 neighbours, I’ll find out today whether the Murrumbidgee River will inundate our homes.
But as residents watch the rising flood waters, we face an unsettling quiet. The point of no return has already been passed and the river will have its way: our homes, situated within a ring levee in the middle of a New South Wales Riverina region flood plain, are already cut off.
My wife, Sophie, and I moved to north Wagga in 2012, just weeks before the last major flood which engulfed about 250 homes, including ours. In the months that followed we asked ourselves over and over, why had we been so reckless as to buy in a known flood area?
Before we made our tree change, we’d scrutinised hydrology studies and read up on the Murrumbidgee’s flood history. We knew our home was protected by a levee that offered 5% annual exceedance probability “one-in-20-year” protection and that seemed an acceptable risk given – let’s be honest – how cheap it was. We were first home buyers and there weren’t a lot of options on the market at our price point. North Wagga offered us the romanticism of Federation cottages and sunset views over redgums.
And yet, despite the trauma of a drawn-out flood recovery, we only fell more in love with our home. The rich river soils are a gardener’s delight and a walk by the river can cure almost anything. But when you live on a flood plain, the certainty of the next big flood is ever-present and all you can do is stay prepared.
Amid the flood scares of August and October, we’ve spent a lot of our time watching and discussing the flood warnings. I religiously scan that ubiquitous yellow triangle that pops up on my weather app offering sheep graziers warnings, portents to pending thunderstorms, and – crucially – predictions about what’s going on in our river.
Wagga’s flood-warning system comprises more than 40 separate rainfall and stream gauges located across a vast plain that branches upstream into dozens of tributaries and creeks. Spill data from the mighty Burrinjuck and Blowering dams, which arrest the headwaters of the Murrumbidgee, form another critical dataset that informs the Bureau of Meteorology’s warnings.
But that’s not the only system informing residents’ decisions in times of disaster. When floods threatened in 2012, 2016 and 2022, localised social media groups lit up, as the north Wagga hive mind weighed up the possibilities and implications of each approaching flood peak. Official warnings were scrutinised and plans of action compared. It can be hard to make decisions based on rapidly changing information.
Every flood is different and this one has been less predictable than most. Downpours early this week didn’t just fill the catchments of dams, whose releases are measured with precision. Significant tributaries that enter the Murrumbidgee, including Tarcutta Creek and Kyeamba Creek, are gushing, while countless unmetered gullies surge with unknowable quantities of runoff.
Warnings have fluctuated dramatically in recent days, making it clear to anyone who’s watching that no one has a handle on it.
And so, after months of planning, crunch time arrived quickly and we had to make agonising decisions on the run.
On Wednesday Sophie and I went to work as usual, reassured by a briefing from the NSW State Emergency Service the night before that said while some roads might be cut off, our home was safe.
A “prepare to evacuate” warning was issued shortly after midday. This developed into a full-blown evacuation order by mid-afternoon, telling us to be out by 7am the following day.
Even as they told us to leave, the SES crew reassured us that flood waters weren’t predicted to overtop our levee. Neighbours discussed their plans: some put a few things up high and left with a suitcase, others chose to empty their homes.
Residents’ homes are no longer accessible by car so those decisions are now locked-in. On Friday morning the BoM’s description of conditions for the Murrumbidgee River in Wagga is “major flooding higher than the December 2010 flood is occurring, where a major flood peak similar to the June 1952 flood is possible Friday afternoon”.
On Thursday night it predicted: “Around 9.80 metres around midday. Further rises are possible.”
Our levee’s height is 9.90 metres, so that “further rises are possible” clause could mean the difference between inconvenience and devastation.
Tim Kurylowicz is executive director of Eastern Riverina Arts, Wagga Wagga
