‘Worse than 2017’: Lismore faces mammoth rebuild after flood as community inundated by loss

Lismore vet Nick Jones can reel off the equipment he lost when his surgery was flooded with clinical precision - X-ray, X-ray processor, ultrasound, computers, telephone system, solar panel inverters - but when asked if he planned to reopen, he falters and his eyes seem to water. A second later his resolve is back, "Of course, there is no question of that."

Jones, family members and friends have been on the ground cleaning the clinic building. He has owned it for 22 years. His father, also a vet, owned it for the 30 years before that.

"1974 was the main flood but still nothing like this, and in 2017 the water came into the bottom storey almost to the second flood," he says. "This time it came 30 or 40cm from the roof."

Jones estimates his business losses at between $150,000 to $250,000. The good news? No animals drowned, not even the two resident clinic cats. They were taken home by a veterinary nurse.

There are photos of animals separated from their owners by the flood waters on community northern rivers Facebook pages. The pets are in shelters or private homes waiting to be claimed. On Tuesday, standing on the edge of the flood water, I watched a woman aged around 70 ask a police diver to check on her two cats in her inundated home. He obliged. There was no good news. Her reaction wasn't emotional, maybe she was in shock, but she thanked the officer for checking and left holding her daughter's arm.

Lismore is "getting on" with the cleanup. The Mud Army is out in force, ripping up furnishings, carrying out damaged chairs, tables, desks, hosing mud off, but yesterday I also saw a woman, dressed in overalls in the CBD, sobbing against a car. She was with people. They gave her space to cry.

I have lived in the northern rivers for 15 years. For this story I asked more than a dozen people for an interview, and with every request I cautioned them against speaking if it would upset them. I do this because I live in this community with these people.

"How can anything upset me after this?" laughs Ken Matheson, a Lismore resident aged 65 years who lost all his possessions on Sunday night.

We speak in the garden of his home as his grown-up children and grandchildren carry his ruined furniture to the curb. When I question him where he went when it became clear his house would flood, he runs out of words and looks away. We stand together under a blue sky in silence - the morning's rain has cleared. I don't want him to feel distressed so joke about his industrious family.

Even though his house has never before had water through it, he couldn't get flood insurance, explaining "no one will do it, no one would give it to me".

Lismore post-flood has a smell that has elements of rotten fruit, lawn clippings, urine and mud. There's about 10cm of slippery ground sludge that is as dark and thick as melted chocolate - but with that smell. In some parts of the town, the force of water has torn up pavers. Towers of rubbish dot the footpath and Mud Army volunteers are hurriedly, almost feverishly, building those mounds (some almost two metres) ever higher tossing on everything you can imagine - curtains, carpets, furniture, toys, clothes, shoes, china. "It's worse than 2017" has become a greeting, almost a salute.

On the ground also are police, ambulance officers and units from the Rural Fire Service with their high-pressure hoses. Everyone is busy, everyone has a purpose. Still, occasionally, someone will spring a leak and allow themselves tears. I visited an evacuation centre. To protect the privacy and dignity of the evacuees, the media are banned. I was there, as a local, dropping off food. I can't tell you what I saw. When I got back to my car, I allowed myself a cry. It's not my first.

Even people whose homes weren't hit by the floods are frenetic - baking for evacuee friends, sourcing food for the centres, cleaning mud-caked properties. It's as though we must make amends because our properties are still intact. Survivor guilt.

The supermarket shelves were stripped bare, the roads north and south cut. Daryl Spriggs, the minister of the Lismore Presbyterian Church, helped source supplies for the evacuation centres.

"Butchers have been donating sausages, rissoles, steaks - and egg and bacon for our food van to keep people fed," he says.

Spriggs is also cleaning his water-damaged church with volunteers and providing pastoral care to his congregation. He began the role in Lismore four weeks ago.

"It's sort of late nights and early starts with disrupted sleep, but I guess I'm confident in a sovereign God even in the midst of this," he says.

Manoeuvring between summits of rubbish, people in Lismore seem to be trying to find their way - literally and metaphorically.

"I was planning to retire this year," says Alex Coronakes, the owner of Lismore's Tropicana fruit shop. Now he is unsure of this future.

He has run the shop for 39 years and his father ran it before him. He can't remember how many times it was flooded but gestures to the 1974 and 2017 high water mark in his doorway.

"This time it was way up there," he says, pointing straight up. "It touched the ceiling. I reckon there was six metres of water in this shop."

Being an old hand at floods he removed his produce on Saturday.

As a regional journalist based in northern New South Wales, I am on the frontline of climate change, on the frontline of what seems to be a human war against the environment.

I reported on the 2011 Brisbane floods, the 2017 Lismore flood and the Black Summer bushfires of 2019/20.

Reporting for the Guardian on the bushfires, I asked Scott Morrison what he was doing about climate change to stop this happening again and again, explaining that fire evacuees wanted to know. Gladys Berejiklian's response was: "Honestly, not today."

I know that soon a senior federal cabinet minister will arrive (wearing chinos and a checked shirt) and tour the devastation with news crews in tow. The politician will say how resilient and hardy regional people are, how we have great community spirit, but won't talk about climate change - or how these floods are different, or how we are going to prepare for a future in which these events are more frequent.

Frank Cooper, who also lost all his possessions in the Lismore floods, was reluctant to be interviewed by me at first because he says other people have been harder hit and are more deserving of having their story heard.

He has lived in his house for 35 years and it has never previously flooded. He didn't have flood insurance because no one would sell it to him. He and his wife are staying with his sister in a one-bedroom house.

Yes, regional people are resilient, but our communities deserve better than platitudes. We need real change.