Shine Awards: Heroic resilience in the face of NSW floods disaster

When the floodwater rose up around Alana Sheridan’s home in northern NSW in February, her first instinct was to protect her herd.

Shine Award nominee Alana Sheridan has not given up on her dream of buying her own farm to run her cattle, despite the setback of the devastating floods in northern NSW earlier this year that killed some of her herd and destroyed all her macadamia trees as well as her home.

When the floodwaters rose up around Alana Sheridan’s home in northern NSW in February this year, her first instinct was to ­protect her “herd”.

That included her 100 braford cattle, her family, and her neighbours.

Ms Sheridan and her husband, Tim, took their neighbours in and after hours spent in the roof watching the floodwaters rise around them, they used a boat to ferry everyone to safety in the dead of night.

“We watched the water come up and it just wasn’t stopping,” Ms Sheridan recalls.

“The worst part was listening to other people’s cattle and horses during the night floating past. They were just screaming their heads off. It was heartbreaking to hear. That broke us more than anything.”

The floodwaters killed 10 of the family’s cattle, including her daughter’s prized show cattle and hand-reared calves, as well as 100 chickens. “We didn’t realise it was going to go that high,” Ms Sheridan says. “We put the cattle on a flood pad, which is 2m high, thinking they’d be fine, but the water came up 3.5m.”

The ordeal did not end when the floodwaters receded. ­Shoulder-deep water had filled the ­family’s home, on the macadamia farm on which they worked in Green Forest, south of Lismore.

Along with the loss of their home and all of their possessions, Ms Sheridan lost her income when the 13,000 macadamia trees she had only just finished planting were drowned.

“Our work has been put on hold for a bit at the moment, but it’s starting to get better and it looks like we’ll be replanting, so there’s a bit of light at the end of the tunnel,” she says.

Since the flood, the family has stayed in eight different homes, relying on the generous hospitality of family and friends.

Ms Sheridan lost about 10 cattle to the floods.

The children’s school was badly damaged, meaning they had to find a new one, and the ­cattle have needed to be fed hay for the past six months because the floodwaters sapped the nutrients from all the pastures.

Despite the many setbacks, Ms Sheridan has not given up on her dream of buying her own farm to run the family’s cattle, which are now on three agistment blocks.

“We’ve been trying to save enough money for the past 10 to 15 years, trying to build our herd up to sell enough to be able to get into the farm market,” she says.

“It’s a hard market to get into. I just love the animals and the land. It’s not a glamorous lifestyle … it’s hard work but we love it.”

Her extraordinary resilience and selflessness are why Ms Sheridan has been nominated in this year’s Shine Awards, which put a spotlight on the stories of rural and regional women. A partnership between Australian rural and regional masthead The Weekly Times and Harvey Norman, the Shine Awards recognise unsung leaders who make a difference to their communities.

Ms Sheridan describes the ­cattle as her saving grace: “If we didn’t have those cows as backup to be able to sell for money, we’d be in a lot of trouble,” she says.