After preparing for days, Echuca residents just want the flood to happen already

The great dividing river is now uniting border towns in apprehension, as it encroaches on their backyards and threatens their homes. The floods are here, but the forecast for the peak changes more rapidly than the currents can carry it.

On the Victorian border, Echuca is wedged on the west with the Campaspe River, which flooded last week, and the Murray on the east, which is expected to peak between Sunday and Monday.

The local GP Claire Goodman stands in her back yard. There is water everywhere and it is not receding. The house she shares with her husband, Matt, and two kids backs onto the Campaspe. They knew it would flood, but were not prepared for how fast and hard it came.

The power is gone in parts of the house, the garage roof has fallen in and there is mud throughout the foundations.

The emergency evacuation warning for Echuca has been in place for seven days now, but the town is buzzing.

Dressed in athleisure, people walk up the main street, takeaway coffees in hand. They take their dogs to look at the river, they visit neighbours and they go to the pub.

Utes full of sandbags file across town, the SES volunteers in their bright orange are everywhere and, someone points out, even the Queensland firies have made it.

Everyone is tired, though. Everyone is over the wait.

The community has laid almost 200,000 sandbags, they have moved their furniture off the floor and cleared out every store selling gumboots.

Now, in the heat and humidity, those who have stayed wait to see how high the river will come. This is traditionally dry country, but it feels like the middle of the rainy season.

Everyone has a contingency plan.

Across the other side of the town sits the levee.

The high school teacher Julie Golledge lives on the wet side of the levee. Her driveway is underwater but her house is built high.

Wet-siders who have stayed are looking out for each other. Every day at 4pm they meet for drinks and a debrief. They work out how to do normal chores despite water covering the roads.

On Saturday morning it was rubbish collection. Taking around a stand-up paddleboard and a few boats they went from house to house to collect trash. Then they ferried it across the water and over the wall of dirt into a waiting truck.

Some of them will likely lose their homes to flood waters in the next 48 hours. They want to get it over and done with.

Despite the threat it has brought this week, Echuca is still a river town. Golledge looks around and points out flatweed floating past, laughing at the snails fornicating in the flood waters, and comments on how much the kookaburras are loving it.

Rochester is their warning. The town, which flooded last week, is still covered in mud. The streets are lined with treasures turned to junk: beloved couches, the perfect pair of pants, old records. They are bracing for another wave of water to hit early next week.

The community is already fatigued from waiting. Everyone hopes the levy will hold, but no one would put money on it.