Mildura floods: How community is recovering as Murray River recedes

One restaurant is expecting the rebuild will cost more than $1m after it had to lay off all of its staff. Find out how Mildura is rebuilding.

Mildura is beginning the recovery process after being hit by severe flooding that inundated the lower-lying sections of the city.

The Mildura Rural City Council has started to pull down levees as the floodwaters recede. Many businesses and residents that were affected by the floods are now working to rebuild.

One such business is the Dockside Cafe which owner Sean Bowley said lost more than $1m in revenue and flood recovery.

“It’s probably going to cost around $100,000 to rebuild, but we probably lost about $1m in revenue,” he said.

Dockside Cafe Mildura has only just started the clean-up and building process after the 2022 Victorian floods. Picture: Supplied.

Mr Bowley said while they were lucky to get some warning and were able to prepare, they still had about three months of recovery ahead of them.

“We got some warning ahead time of so we basically demolished the cafe, but is pretty heartbreaking to come back and all of the work that we’d put in just destroyed,” he said.

He spoke about the “heartbreaking” process of rebuilding.

“We’d finally got the marina looking good, we’d planted some trees a few years back that were finally looking good, they’ve all been ruined and will have to be replanted,” he said.

“It’s stuff like that can’t just be rebuilt, that’s really heartbreaking.”

As a result of the flooding, Dockside Cafe had to let all their staff go.

Mr Bowley said it would be a struggle to find a team like that again.

“We had a chef that we really liked and about eight other staff that all had to be let go they’ve all moved on to other jobs,” he said.

This issue stretches further than just riverside business, Mr Bowley said that almost every business in the town will have been impacted.

“There are places as far back as Fifteenth St that took a hit. Even service stations and places like Sunraysia Marine would have seen losses,” he said.

“The river is usually packed with jet skis and power boats but this year the river has been closed down all during the high season.”

Mr Bowley said he expected it would be at least another three months before Dockside Cafe was up and running again.

The Mildura Tennis Club also saw its entire facility go underwater.

Club president Aaron Wilkie said the grass was starting to look green again and the club was beginning work to rebuild.

The Mildura Tennis Club had seen its entire facility go underwater, has now had the water recede, and is beginning work to rebuild. Source: Facebook

“The water came off last Sunday, and the court is already starting to come back, a bit of a green tinge is starting to come back as well, which is a good sign, we didn’t think it would come back that quickly,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s good news.”

He estimates the club lost about $15,000 in revenue but has been fortunate enough to receive some money from Tennis Australia and the Mildura Rural City Council to aid in the recovery.

“We usually make around $10,000 to $7000 from the pro tour that had to be moved to Swan Hill, on top of that our regular Saturdays and twilight games are maybe a $1000 that we might be losing,” he said.

“We’re hoping it’s not big a cost but we’ve got $10 grand of funding all up from Tennis Australia and community grants from the council.”

Mr Wilkie predicts the club will be back in full swing by early March.

During the peak of flooding Mildura’s race track went completely underwater. Pic: Glenn Milne

Mildura race course also suffered major damages, at one point being completely underwater.

Club Manager Jarratt Farley says that estimations on how much it will cost are still being worked out, But the “dream” is to be open by April.

“All our buildings have been damaged so we’ll to replace all the flooring a timber, we have a hygienist coming up next week to see if some of the buildings can be salvaged or need to be replaced completely,” he said.

“We haven’t put a dollar figure on it, hopefully over the next week we might have a dollar amount we can put on it.

“The dream is to be racing in late July, we’re having a meeting with Country Racing Victoria in the middle of April to assess where we are at.”