Courage Under Water: True stories from devastating NSW floods

The waters may have receded in northern NSW but the scars left by the 2022 flooding horror remains. These are the true stories of a community still reeling from Australia’s worst natural disaster since Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy. WATCH COURAGE UNDER WATER HERE.

As the waters rose pensioners Derrick and Sue Goodwin retreated first to the bedroom of their Lismore home and then up on top of the wardrobe.

“At that stage, we realised we weren’t getting picked up,” Mr Goodwin said. “So we just had to wait.”

Then there was a crack from the roof and Mr Goodwin climbed down into neck-deep water. By the time rescuers cut through the ceiling it had been 12 hours and he had a raging fever.

The fourth worst natural disaster in the world last year devastated Lismore and the surrounding communities of the Northern Rivers.

The initial shock of a much bigger flood than expected and the collective trauma of a community still trying to rebuild more than 12 months on has been marked in the Courage Under Water documentary released by The Daily Telegraph.

Only rooftops could be seen across Lismore on March 3, 2022, as rescuers desperately searched for starnded residents. Picture: AFP Photo/ADF

“My worst moment was on the bridge,” cleaner Bianca Pope recalled.

After being rescued from the roof of her partner’s house she had to carry her 35kg boxer bull mastiff dog Nala through fast-flowing chest-deep water on the Ballina Street Bridge.

“When I was carrying Nala I honestly just had no energy left in me, I just don’t know how I carried her … I just turned into (The Incredible) Hulk and just had to save her,” she said.

The waters rose to an unprecedented 14.4m in Lismore, covering the bridge as the water coming down Wilsons and Leycester creeks at its fastest flowed fast enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every second.

These hotel guests spent hours awaiting rescue by air or boat. A helicopter arrived to collect the rescue team that assisted them onto the roof. Picture: Higgins Storm Chasing

In town, picture framer Sheila Turner left her shop and headed upstairs in The Strand Arcade as the dirty water poured in. She was trapped there for four days.

“There was no hot water, no electricity. And our phones all went dead. We had no communication,” she said.

Australia’s biggest natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy in 1974 has left more than 500 people still reliant on emergency accommodation while many more are struggling by, living in their cars under their destroyed homes.

Thousands are waiting to find out if they will qualify for a grant from the $700 million government buy back scheme.

Emergency crews and civilians using their own boats spent days heading into the flooded wasteland and saving people caught by rising waters. Picture: Toby Zerna

Lismore mayor Steve Krieg said many people were trapped paying mortgages on homes they could not live in and enduring ongoing uncertainty.

Despite his own home and city business going under water he is determined to rebuild.

“This year, 2023, in my mind is going to be so much more challenging than 2022,” he said.

“It’s the year of the start of the rebuild. When you’re talking of possibly 1200 homes, either being bought back or relocated, that’s not going to happen in 12 months, or even 24 months, but hopefully this year, we’ll see really positive steps forward as far as the security and the safety of people of Lismore.”