Cut off by floodwaters, spirits are high in Hinton – and laughter is the best medicine

Pete Goldspring swings his arm left to right in a high, arching wave as he steers his dinghy towards the bank of the choppy, brown Paterson River.

Soon after disembarking and tossing his anchor onto the grass in front of him, he’s chuckling at being photographed.

Morale is high in Hinton despite the floods thanks to events at the Victoria Hotel such as Saturday’s barbecue. Credit: Renae Saxby

Less than 50 metres away, floodwaters lap at the back deck of his pub, the Victoria Hotel. But he’s not worried – the water is on the way down.

Pete, like many Hinton locals, is nursing a sore head after the pub’s karaoke night on Friday that drew more than 100 people and stretched into the wee hours. It’s one of the events the pub has put on to keep morale high since the community, about 15 minutes’ drive from Maitland, was cut off by the overflowing Paterson.

“It is crazy, but we have a lot of fun,” Pete says, as a family expertly manoeuvres its buggy around road closure signs.

“Crazy” is one way to describe an incident involving a dead brown snake attached to a piece of fishing line that left some, including Pete’s wife, Lainey, less than pleased with the practical joke.

“It is crazy, but we have a lot of fun.” Pub owner Pete Goldspring and his wife, Lainey.Credit: Renae Saxby

“Are we still friends?” a wary local asks Lainey.

“No, you’ve got to get a turn with the shovel,” she says.

But the shovel doesn’t come out, and the gag is soon forgiven, if not forgotten. It’s all part of the fun, Pete says.

Then there’s Pete’s now-viral videos, filmed at his Phoenix Park home just up the river, which are the talk of Hinton on Saturday morning.

Hinton locals are making the most of the isolation.Credit: Renae Saxby

In two videos that have been watched more than 40,000 times on social media, Pete races Croc shoes, hosts tinny races and reels in his son Charlie during a fish from the “lake” that has now closed in on his home.

“I was going a little bit stir-crazy, stuck on the island there with the wife, so I’ve got to do something to keep myself amused, keep the family going,” Pete says.

“We sort of came up with a couple of hare-brained ideas to lighten the community and have a little bit of fun with it.”

It seems to have helped. Kids making the most of road closures roar back and forth along the town’s main street on dirt bikes and go-karts. Nearby, locals nursing beers outside the 185-year-old watering hole are as unfazed as they are by the floodwaters metres away, which hit particularly hard with the town near the confluence of two rivers – the Paterson and the Hunter.

Meanwhile, the thrum of a State Emergency Service boat ferrying locals and supplies from Hinton to nearby Morpeth chimes in several times a day.

“That’s what it’s been all about,” Pete says. “Just having a bit of fun with everyone.

“And it brings everyone together, everyone has a great laugh. And this is a great community and everyone hooks in and helps one another here. It’s a really great community.”

While spirits are high in Hinton and most homes have been spared, a few hundred metres away, the Wilson family is counting the cost of the catastrophic flooding to its dairy farm.

Local resident Steve Bacon, whose house is surrounded by water, takes his boat to the pub.Credit: Renae Saxby

About 200 of the farm’s 250 acres, including all of its grazing paddocks, are underwater after the Hunter River burst its banks this week.

The flooding will have a disastrous impact, as the family will need to buy feed for the cattle until at least September, says Dan Wilson, 33, who helps his father run the farm.

Floodwaters that have formed a lake over the farm will probably recede in the next fortnight, but the land won’t be workable for at least a month. By then, it will be too late for the Wilsons to plant winter pastures, leaving them on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars worth of hay that they will need to buy to keep their livestock alive.

With trucks unable to get to the farm because of road closures around Hinton, the Wilsons cannot sell the milk their cows are producing. Each day, about $1000 worth of milk is being tipped out.

The family faced similar challenges in 2022, when floods in February and June inundated the same paddocks.

Flooding is a part of life in Hinton, Dan says. “It’s where we live. It’s going to happen. I don’t get sad about it, I just feed cows.”

Dan’s uncle Ross Wilson says that while the flooding is difficult to recover from, “you’ve got to have it in your head that it’s going to happen”.

“People probably think we’re mad, but it’s a good place to live,” Ross says.

Dan and Krysten Wilson, with son Kolby 2, and daughter Kate, 1, on their Hinton dairy farm.Credit: Renae Saxby

Like Ross, Dan is optimistic, focusing on what work can be done on the farm rather than the hard months ahead.

“You just keep going,” he says. “It is what it is.”

Back at the pub, where Dan and his wife, Krysten, and Ross will join the rest of Hinton on Saturday night, locals are enjoying their first real taste of sunshine in days as a crowd builds ahead of the free barbecue Pete and Lainey are putting on.

“Everyone’s in good spirits,” Pete says.

“It’s the best medicine, laughter.”

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