Two years after silt and mud trashed them, Northern Rivers schools rise from ruin

Mullumbimby public school after the floods. Some of the town’s residents are still living with relatives, in caravans or camps of temporary ‘pod’ homes. Photograph: Dave Lees

“My first memories were just the silt and the mud,” says Dave Lees, summoning his impressions from the day he returned to the Mullumbimby public school campus, the day after it was swallowed by flood waters.

“It was just a brown, smelly, clay-laden, dirty space. It looked like another planet,” the school principal says.