Days after floodwaters hit the highwater mark in Shepparton, Victoria, the worksite at Furphy Engineering resembles a Canberra nightclub in the dead of winter.

Music blasts from a high-powered stereo, but it’s hard to spot even one person on the site, with 75 per cent of the company’s 110 staff unable to get into work on impassable roads. This includes boss Adam Furphy, who is instead ripping up carpets at his flood-damaged home in the regional Victorian town about two hours’ north of Melbourne.