‘I remember him yelling and then he was gone’: Wife tells of final moments before husband swept away in floodwaters

An inquest into the tragic flood death of Ouse farmer Trevor Foster has heard of his final moments before he was swept away by a sudden gush of water.

HELEN Foster was watching from the window as her husband of 59 years fed their sheep, only to see his feet swept from under him in a gush of water.

“I remember him yelling and then he was gone. I didn’t see Trevor after that,” she said.

On Thursday, at an inquest into the flood death of 81-year-old Ouse farmer Trevor Foster, a statement was read to the court by his wife, who witnessed the tragic events of June 6, 2016.

Mrs Foster sadly also passed away before the inquest began.

In her statement read to the court, Mrs Foster said her husband had a daily routine – rising at 7.15am, stoking the fire, getting dressed and feeding the stock.

“I looked out the window and saw as Trevor fed the sheep,” she said.

“The water came so quickly, and with a rush. I’d never seen anything like it before.”

Mrs Foster went inside and called triple-0.

Despite a full-scale search for her husband, his body was not found until two years later by another farmer.

Jack Penny, manager of generation control at Hydro Tasmania, told Coroner Simon Cooper the agency had not released any water into the Ouse River immediately prior to the river breaking its banks.

“The flow into the Ouse would have been naturally done – not released from storages,” he said.

Trevor Foster of Ouse.

Tasmania Police Sergeant Damian Bidgood, who was stationed at search and rescue, said when he arrived on the scene at Ouse, “you could just see fence tops”, which disappeared as the day progressed.

“The area where the sheep were standing … had risen at least two feet,” he told the coroner.

Sergeant Bidgood also said the force had since developed a swift water response team, which it didn’t have at the time of the devastating 2016 floods.

A picnic shelter at Ouse almost covered by water in the 2016 floods.

Senior Sergeant Adrian Leary, who was in charge of the New Norfolk subdivision at the time, said the waters were raging at 10 to 15km/h.

“At that stage, we didn’t have access to any rapid water search and rescue options,” he said.

“(However) there wasn’t a great deal we could have done further – the weather and the river conditions were quite hazardous.”

The inquest also heard about the copious and hazardous levels of debris floating through the floodwaters – including dead animal bodies and large trees.

Constable Benjamin Cunningham said it was too dangerous to use vessels to search the water because of the debris and submerged hazards like fences and barbed wire.

“There would have been hundreds and hundreds of tonnes of debris at Meadowbank Dam,” he said.

Ron Foster, the son of Ouse farmer Trevor Foster, who died in the 2016 floods. Picture: Amber Wilson

Constable Cunningham said the search for Mr Foster continued until last light, with rescuers locating a blue cloth hat about 600 metres from his home.

“We were still in the rescue phase. We were hoping we would find Mr Foster clinging to a tree or debris, or that he’d made his way to the water’s edge.”

He also said Tasmania Police’s water rescue capabilities weren’t fully developed at the time.

“It was an unusual search for us. Flood incidents in Tasmania are quite rare,” he said.

The inquest has also this week investigated the death of newspaper delivery driver Peter Watson, who perished in floodwaters at Evandale.

The inquest will reconvene in September to investigate the flood death of 75-year-old Latrobe woman Mary Allford.

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