Nikki clung to the gutter in rising floodwater for hours. A kayaker was her only hope for survival

This story is part of an in-depth series looking at the February-March 2022 flooding that devastated Lismore.See all 7 stories.

Perched on two thin mattresses, atop an antique oak wardrobe near the ceiling, Nikki McGuire kissed her dog Lizzie and cat Max goodbye, before plunging into the rising floodwater inside her living room.

From the high wardrobe, she struck out towards the only possible escape: submerged stained-glass casement windows, facing the street. In the fetid, brown darkness she felt for the fastener on the metal arm of the window stay, and loosened it, enough.

Then, somehow, tiny Nikki McGuire pushed the window open against the Wilsons River in full flood, barrelling down her residential street in Girards Hill, Lismore, in the early morning hours before dawn on Monday, February 28.

Immediately, the force of the torrent dragged her outside into the early morning darkness, throwing her along her roofline. She flung out a hand to get a last grasp purchase on the gutter, and it stuck. For nearly two hours, as the freezing rain pummelled her, as escaping gas filled her lungs, as the neighbours’ screams tore at her, Nikki McGuire hung on.

Nikki McGuire has been left traumatised by the flood escape from her grandmother’s family home in Girards Hill, Lismore. Credit: Jacklyn Wagner

“You’ve got this, you’ve got this,” she kept saying. “Hang on, girl, you’ve got this.”

Blood was filling her mouth. Her teeth were vibrating uncontrollably, slicing the inside of her mouth and tongue. As daylight broke, trapped neighbours across the road on higher ground started yelling: “Hang on, Nikki, hang on.”

Out of the gloom, a kayaker appeared, roaring along in the swirling floodwater.

Nikki yelled out: “Can you please get me? I’m gonna drown.”

The kayaker replied firmly: “No”

She screamed: “You can’t leave me”.

The kayaker pointed behind him to where a lady was hanging on, trying to keep her head above water. The man paddled the woman to safety, before he returned, asking Nikki to jump onto the kayak. She told him she couldn’t. Why?

“My tights are around my ankles, and I’ve got no knickers on. And I don’t want my arse being caught by a TV chopper on the news tonight.”

They both started laughing before Nikki made herself presentable for rescue.

When she returned to the house days later, after the water had subsided, her Lizzie and Max were found alive. She walked inside the living room and looked at the casement windows: her black hand marks and footprints jumped around the frame, still desperate for her escape.

She began to cry.

Today, a photo of Nikki McGuire is among a collection of nearly 100 images of Lismore flood victims bound together by spirex wire on NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s desk inside his Macquarie Street office.

Photographer Jacklyn Wagner began taking the images three weeks after the history-making disaster, which saw a 14.4 metre flood hit Lismore. She wanted to capture the flood victims returning to their homes, striving to regain some small essence of their former lives.

Last month, Lismore mayor Steve Krieg presented the catalogue of Wagner’s images to the NSW premier and new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to remind them of the “humans behind any decision made about the Northern Rivers in the aftermath of the flood”.

Perrottet has tied his premiership to the Northern Rivers, describing the rebuild of the region as his most important task. He has visited the region five times. For one period, he stayed for eight consecutive days, away from the TV cameras, listening and learning.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet touring a bakery in Lismore days after the devastating flood. Credit: Elise Derwin

Asked about how a political leader in these situations can prevent compassion overruling good governance, he said you need to exercise balance, giving comfort and explaining the seriousness of the situation to the rest of the state.

But then, when he returned to Sydney, he was determined to address the situation in an intellectual way to try and solve the short-term and long-term problems he had witnessed and been told about. He set up the NSW Inquiry headed by former NSW Police commissioner Mick Fuller and Professor Mary O’Kane and the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Commission, which formally started this week.

“I certainly went through that journey myself because at the start, when I was up there, early on,” he says. “It was very confronting, and very difficult and very .... I found it difficult emotionally. ”

Asked about the photos on his desk which he shows to visitors and ministers, he said: “The pictures in the book brought back the physical devastation, as well as the human devastation, in a way that I think I hadn’t seen before.”

The premier and Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin are setting up an exhibition of the photos at the NSW Parliament. Perrottet wants a book published for all MPs and offered for sale to the public.

It is winter now, a bitterly cold and dry morning in Lismore, and I’m driving with Wagner to visit the people she photographed, nearly four months after the flood.

As we drive into the hardest-hit areas of South Lismore and North Lismore, an unforgiving morning mist rises from the valley floor. It limps between rows and rows of crooked houses that look like broken teeth, missing glass, timber, tin and, in some cases, people. For sale signs dot the neighbourhood.

If you follow the fog into backyards, the rutted ground now has a dusty crust. One quick step off the Hills Hoist path, however, and the surface cracks under your weight, underfoot is still wet, moving, seemingly ready for the next flood to drag everyone down to the river all over again.

It’s a community made up of Southies and Northies who hand down timber and tin homes like the family jewels; bohemians and artists attracted by the freedom, alternative lifestyle types treasuring the architecture; first home buyers hungry for a bargain; and the desperate seeking out cheap rent.

Now they are living in tents or caravans besides the shell of their former homes. Some sleep in bedrooms without ceilings or walls. Others are still relying on the kindness of family, friends or strangers who have offered up a house, room or couch.

All the residents of this dumbfounded city are beginning to awaken from the fogginess of flood forgetfulness, and wondering what will happen to them today. Are they about to become Australia’s first climate change refugees? Will they be offered a land swap, a grant to move on?

Or will they be allowed to stay? Jack Bobbin, 82, hopes so.

Jack Bobbin, 82, with grandson Samuel in his South Lismore home. Credit: Jacklyn Wagner

His grandson Sam, who helped rescue his pop and nan Pat, as raindrops the size of a small fist broke over his face, and the bitumen and diesel stained flood water coated their bodies, can now trace his rapport with the historical past by surviving a flood. Sam had been hit by the 2022 flood, as his mother Michelle had been hit by the 1989 flood. In turn Michelle’s father Jack had been hit well and truly by the 1974 flood, the previous record. Then Jack’s father Stan had duly survived the 1954 flood.

It’s in the blood.

“Southies don’t run, mate,” Jack says firmly, as the extended family in the gutted kitchen, with a newly installed benchtop, nod with a knowing laugh.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.