Chris Books is remarkably upbeat for a man whose pub is currently under water.
Books has run the Wollombi Tavern, a watering hole tucked in the Hunter Valley, 128km north of Sydney, for five years.
“I’m doing all right,” he says stoically, “the flood’s starting to recede.”
On Tuesday afternoon, the pub was metres underwater. Now, water has receded to about a metre above the floor – similar to 2007 floods levels.
“People find it funny we’re all so upbeat about it but we live in an area where it floods. Yes, it’s the second-worst in history, but there’s nothing you can do about it,” Books says.
“It’s just a shame that it comes off the back of fires, a pandemic and more floods.”
As the east coast low moves north, the Hunter Valley has become a central focus of emergency services, with significant river rises leading to dozens of evacuation orders and rescues in the major wine region.
On the banks of the Hunter River, Singleton mayor Sue Moore was preparing her community for the worst. Major flooding was occurring in the town, with river levels likely to exceed March 2022 heights by Wednesday evening.
“We’re expecting a peak of 13.8 metres later this afternoon, but we don’t know what time,” Moore says. “From there, we’ll wait for the water to recede then start the clean-up.”
As well as the “massive amount” of clean-up ahead, there is the job of restoring power to hundreds of homes. She was still pushing for her shire to be issued with a disaster declaration, which would pave the way for emergency $1,000 payments.
“Since the bushfires we’ve gotten reasonably good at resilience but it’s unfortunate we have to do that from fires to flood impacts,” she says.
“We’re a close-knit town as many country towns are, everyone looks out for each other but it’s tough. You hope it’s not going to be a bad one but you prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
“This is new territory for people out in Bulga and Broke, we’ve got properties out there with water through them that probably never did.”
Casanne Graham is watching the water lash her vineyard in Broke, where, for the first time in her memory, the town centre has been evacuated.
When she left her property on Tuesday morning to train with a girlfriend 10 minutes down the road, it wasn’t flooding. Hours later, RFS had to come and rescue her to get her to safety.
“Even they said it came up really quickly,” she says.
Graham is acting president of the Broke Fordwich Wine Tourism Association. She says locals know when Wollombi floods because the same brook runs down their way. But the speed came as a surprise.
“I’m locked in, I can’t go anywhere, the road is blocked either end,” she says. “From what I can see, most vineyards are underwater, how that’ll affect the vines is an unknown.”
Parts of her and her partner’s reds were underwater during the March floods, which ruined the season’s grapes. This time, accommodation has been affected, too. Cellar doors planned for the school holidays have been cancelled, as have hotel bookings.
“The word unprecedented has been thrown around a lot to date, but it is,” Graham says.
In Morpeth on the southern banks of the Hunter River, Jesse Clarke is waiting out the floods with his partner on their rural property, Phoenix Park Farm.
Clarke has grown up on the river his whole life. He’s no stranger to flooding events, but the environment has changed since he was a kid.
On Wednesday afternoon, all their paddocks were flooded with rain.
“As a farmer, especially here on a flood plain, you always have to be thinking you’re going to get flooded but in saying that, it still is challenging,” he says.
“We hadn’t recovered from the first [flood], we were just starting to get the ground ready for spring and go all guns blazing and then another one ruins those plans.”
The couple plan to stay on their property – their two-story home is in a high part of the flood plains. But he fears for the future of their farm.
Before these floods, Clarke and his partner had just gotten back to 25% of profits in production and weekly income to where they were six months ago.
“It won’t be until summer we can get back to the position we were in before now,” he says.
“Just before this rain event it was only just dry enough to get the ground ready with a tractor for spring.
“Any preparation you do is being completely destroyed, you get no benefit. It’s really frustrating for me to see … all the flooding in places where it [could be] managed better with the right infrastructure. Because with climate change, they are going to happen more and more.”
Back in Wollombi, Books is confident with any luck, the pub will be back up and running in no time. He hoped to gain access by Thursday, when clean up would begin.
“We’ll have to replace bits and pieces but I needed to get into the kitchen anyway,” he says.
In 2007, they reopened in two days.
“We’ll get the bar running pretty quickly, and we can start pouring cold beer almost from the time we open the doors.”
