IT may look like it, but Mark Chinnery isn’t standing in a rice paddock.
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On Monday morning, just 400 metres away from where Mr Chinnery was standing, Mirrool Creek was rushing past, spilling out into a paddock of oats that has already had to be sown twice this year due to heavy rains.
This paddock alone is now potentially looking at costing $40,000, but this is only touching the surface of the losses many farms surrounding Mirrool Creek are now facing after the levee bank was cut to save Yenda from flooding.
No stranger to flood chaos, in 2012 Mr Chinnery had to postpone his wedding when floodwaters meant guests could not attend, but while he says this time things have been far better managed, the reality is there will still be losses. “But that’s just farming,” he said with a shrug.
Lying directly in between Ardlethan and Yenda on the Mirrool Creek floodplain is Barellan, a town where the flooding doesn’t seem to make headlines, but which suffers no less the effects.
“We are a bit forgotten, but the water comes here first,” Jo Ohlsen from the Golden Grain Cafe said.
“We will be very nervous this week, especially if there is more heavy rain to come – if we get another two to three inches on Thursday, well who knows?”
Unfortunately the Bureau of Meteorology has forecast just that, with 15-20 mm predicted to fall on Thursday.
Mrs Ohlsen said her family’s paddocks had already been wet for three months, with crops completely under water.
“And we are not even the worst off, I have family whose place is only accessible by boat and friends right on Mirrool Creek who haven’t been able to get out for weeks. “Our farming community really has had the worst of this.”
In 2012 floodwaters crept into Barellan, ruining the new floor of the Golden Grain Cafe that was less than one week old, but you won’t find owner Beth Preston feeling sorry for herself.
“This water, and the more to come, is going to have a big effect on a lot of people,” she said. “But none more than our farmers, there are some who have lost 80 per cent of their crops. We really feel for them, and for the crops they have lost, many have been isolated for days.”