Eugowra was prepared for a flood last Monday morning.
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What hit the community on the Mandagery Creek can only be described as an inland tsunami.
Tragically, two beloved community members lost their lives after a wall of water hit the town.
It took the whole community, and one of the largest SES responses in NSW history, to get so many to safety over the next 15 hours.
There are so many raw stories of sheer survival of Monday, November 14, after an absolute deluge of rain fell on the saturated central west from Sunday night.
Neil and Jane McMillan live upstream of Eugowra, and they were watching the water levels at Toogong through the night.
When the water level rose to 10.2m, then dropped two metres, then rose again, they thought there might be an issue with the gauge.
Still they prepared: Neil got up and dropped the flood fences. They got up at 2am and 4am to check the water levels. They were rising fast.
As day broke, the McMillans decided to go for a drive to get an idea of what the water was really doing. They could see their neighbour stranded on her verandah with "water belting past" and went straight to town to raise the call for a helicopter to help.
In town, locals were up as early as 3am. By 4.30am the town fire siren sounded and evacuations from flood-prone West Eugowra got under way.
SES controller Greg Agustin says they prepared for a 1990 flood prediction, of 10.2m at the bridge.
"We knew exactly where it went, so we were getting everyone out of this (West) side first ... and then we just got swamped," he said.
Judy Smith, who has penned The Advocate's Eugowra News for decades, received a knock on the window from Julie Dukes about 4.30am, and started to prepare to move to higher ground.
Jodie Greenhalgh went to check their horses while the rest of the family went out to help with preparations.
West Eugowra was evacuated, items in properties like the Rural Transaction Centre were lifted above the 1990 flood level.
They set to work sandbagging the back of Pye Street properties - a few inches of water came in the back of places like the museum in 1990.
Ray Agustin was one of those sandbagging on Pye Street. They were on their way back to the showground for more when the first wave hit.
"Around the corner we had a metre of water come around the Escort Rock Cafe, it came straight across Apex Park, around the corner and straight down the street," Mr Agustin said.
The water roared into Nanima Street and the team fled up it. They saw one person already being swept away - and formed a chain of four people anchored to a ute to pull him to safety.
With Ray was Tim Cheney, and they were getting more sandbags when Tim got a phone call from his mum in Pye Street.
"She didn't sound worried, she said 'you'd better pop around here, I can see water coming across the paddocks'," he recounts.
Tim pulled up in his mum's driveway and turned to see a giant wave - pushing a whole crop of windrowed canola - coming their way.
"The first house that it hit was mine, and it hit the 4WD and spun it around. The whole garage door got pushed in," he said.
"I ran through the water from her house to my house thinking I could get back to mum's."
Tim ended up standing on his table holding his dog.
"The water just kept coming and coming and coming," he said.
People were calling Tim for help. He could only phone 000. His beloved Diane, who we now know died in the floodwaters, was one of them.
With the region smashed by storms that night, the only way anyone from outside could get to Eugowra was by air - with 14 helicopters from numerous agencies flying in.
When Tim could get out of his house he flagged down a fire truck driven by more local volunteers and went in to find his mum up to her shoulders in water.
"Her front windows had blown in, her back windows had blown out, and the current was blowing through the house so fast," he said.
At some point, mobile services were cut when - we now know - the Telstra exchange was lifted off its footings.
Jodie Greenhalgh lost sight of her husband and daughter when that first wave hit, she could only flee up Nanima Street towards her house in Loftus Street.
Others were already sheltering there and they huddled inside until the force of the water was so great it blew the front door off and water gushed into the home.
The group had to wait for it to ease before they could fight their way against the current and use the cars that ended up jammed into the front of the house to help each other onto the roof.
There were seven people, including a baby and a toddler, who sat on the Greenhalghes' roof for six-and-a-half to seven hours waiting for rescue.
They watched a house float up the street as helicopters winched people around them to safety.
Casey Jones, and her two-year-old Korra, were on that roof with them for six-and-a-half hours.
Days later, she could reflect that they must have seemed safe on that roof compared to others clinging to trees or still trapped in houses.
At Judy and Ken Smith's house, teams of good neighbours had arrived in the early hours of the morning to help them raise items above where the water might come - pot plants were up on a table on the back deck, nobody knows where any of it ended up.
They went to a house that's elevated about three foot higher, but it wasn't high enough.
Judy was on the back deck when the water surged through, taking her mobile phone with it, and she quickly brought the two smaller dogs inside.
The water pressure was immediately too great for her to open the door again for the bigger dog Minnie.
"Around the corner came a labrador, swimming, Minnie jumped in and went too," Judy recounted.
"I held that Daschund in my arm, the water rose higher and higher and higher and the furniture all floated."
It was after 6pm by the time the Smiths were able to get out to make their way back to their own home, they too were collected by one of the crews in a fire truck who got them to the showground. The dogs were later found, safe and well.
SES controller Greg Agustin was one of about 15 people who ended up sheltering on the upstairs balcony of the Central Hotel while the floodwaters raged.
When the water slowed down enough for them to get out safely, they got into the Category 1 fire trucks and went into the streets.
Ray Agustin recounts the moment he spotted one local lady calling for help from her home which had literally washed away.
Young volunteers waded through shoulder deep and neck deep water to reach those stuck in houses and carry them out to trucks to ferry them to the safety of the Showground.
Di Agustin was at the Showground, where the fire trucks and helicopters were bringing in those they rescued from the floodwaters until late that night.
She says a small group made cups of tea while people from an unaffected home prepared and brought in whatever they could.
There were paramedics on site. Later that night the Rapid Relief Team gained access to the town, bringing rolls.
Roads remained cut and damaged by floodwaters, and many spent the night in the pavilion, dazed. It was only on Tuesday they could be evacuated by bus to Orange.
The shocking scale of what had happened was becoming clear, with Diane Smith and Ljubisa 'Les' Vugec missing in the floodwaters.
In the township, homes had moved off their foundations, some left sitting in the middle of the street or on another block altogether. Cars, fences, and that canola crop, were everywhere.
"I grew up here and I've seen Mandagery floods but every fence is flat and every blade of grass for miles - all the way to Murga once you get up into the hills," Tim said.
"It was absolutely incredibly wide and obviously deep water."
The damage that wave left behind has hit screens across Australia and the world.
Tim was one of 40 Eugowra locals hosted at Charles Sturt University in the immediate aftermath, and he said people "bent over backwards to make sure we're okay".
The RSPCA took their pets into care, they were handed vouchers to go and purchase food and clothing.
"Ever since we've been here we've had Lifeline people and we've had Vinnies, it's just been amazing," Tim said.
"It's just been horrible. But everyone's been so generous. So many people wanting to know how they can help."
The overwhelming response, all say, has come from our own region where so many are impacted by flooding.
Thousands of people with everything from machinery and trucks to clothing, willing hands to mosquito repellent, started rolling into town as soon as the water receded enough for them to get there.
Volunteers from all over our region have helped with the gut-wrenching job of removing sodden and mud-soaked treasures from homes, they have sorted donated clothing and helped people find what they need.
The transformation that has taken place in mere days is remarkable, and it can only inspire hope for the journey that lies ahead for this strong and tight-knit community.
Kim Storey, who lives upstream, was airlifted at 8.30am Monday. She had no communication back into Eugowra with services down and spent an agonising day waiting to hear whether people had got to safety.
"I didn't know my house was still there until the next day - I assumed it wasn't going to be because while I was still in it waiting for the helicopter things were hitting it, it was shuddering," she said.
"(Floodwater) usually takes five or six hours to get from my place to town, it was here in an hour and a half. By the time everyone here knew there was a problem they might have had 10 minutes."
She's spent most of the past week at the showground as part of the team involved in what has been a remarkable response.
"We have had the most amazing immediate response from our own community, surrounding community, and all the government," Ms Storey said.
"Anything you think anyone you could possibly think anyone could need, and someone is helping do it, it's amazing."
But if there's one thing she can urge people to support as Eugowra finds its way forward, it's donating through GIVIT.
They've set the target of raising $5 million so locals can get back on their feet, in their homes.
Go online to https://fundraise.givit.org.au/fundraisers/EPPA
