ABC rural reporter Angus Verley was on location last Friday, January 20 in the flood ravaged Benjeroop area. The broadcast took place from the top floor of the home of Lindsay and Louise Schultz. With a picturesque backdrop of the Murray and a chorus of birds, Mr Verley interviewed six guests during the program.

“We haven’t been flooded out in 100 years but we’ve been flooded out twice in 13 years,” Mr Schultz told Mr Verley.

“Something’s not quite right and that’s what we have got to get to the bottom of.”

Changes in the way the recent floods behaved have been observed on both sides of the Murray River, with many landholders calling for an investigation into the contributing factors. Banks that once easily coped with the river and creek volumes recorded were in some cases overtopped.

The repair of banks on crown land has also caused concern, with Mr Schultz stating the Victorian Government is refusing to fix natural breeches in the levee banks, the same banks that have gone neglected through a lack of maintenance.

The second guest for the program was dairy farmer Rosemary Murray, who farms on the Barr Creek.

“We got our dairy herd out a couple of days before October 26, which was when I left the farm,” said Mrs Murray.

The Murray’s cows were trucked over the border to the dairy farm of family friends, the Mortons.

“It’s a rotary dairy and it’s interesting when you’ve come from a herringbone.

“It took a long time to get them trained to go into a rotary.”

Like many in the area, water still remains on the Murray’s farm after 95 per cent inundation.

“I don’t know how we are going to get that water off, because the channels aren’t there to pump into.”

The Murrays had just completed the Victorian’s Connections program, which often saw open channels removed for pipes.

“We’d only just done our connection program and the pipes came up out of the ground.”

The Murray’s cows returned home on January 5.

Local medicinal cannabis producer and managing director of ECS Botanics, Nan Maree Schoerie, spoke of the challenges they faced and the community spirit that helped them out.

“We built a levee bank around a portion of the farm, the production facility. The farm is 170 acres, we couldn’t pull the levee bank around that, we built a levee bank around 7 acres.”

The freshly built bank developed some seepage, so a call was placed to Mr Schultz.

“Lindsay said don’t worry, you organise some builder’s black plastic and I’ll organise some sandbags, and we’ll get this sorted.”

The army trucked in the black plastic from Swan Hill and a team of volunteers fought through chest deep flood water to lay the plastic down.

Ms Schoerie was moved by the local spirit to help protect her facility.

“I think it’s how country folk operate. I come from Melbourne and I could not imagine that happening in Melbourne.”

Farmer and Lower Loddon flood warden Colin Myers, who farms downstream of the Kerang weir pool spoke of the impacts to his farm.

“The floods took out 80 per cent of our property.

“We didn’t have the house flooded, that was something we were able to protect.

“We saved about 60 acres out of 565.

“We destocked about half the stock, took them out elsewhere, and we kept some stud ones back there at the house.”

Lloyd Polkinghorne of The Bridge newspaper was interviewed about covering such an event and the impacts both sides of the river.

The final guest was Gannawarra CEO Geoff Rollinson, who gave Mr Verley a rundown of the impacts to the shire and the challenging recovery road ahead.

After the interviews, the gracious hosts provided a spread that would make the most proficient CWA member proud.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 26 January 2023.