For some, the terror returns with the roar of the wind or pounding rain. For others, it’s knowing neighbours and friends are living in caravans and tents.
Children innocently splashing in mud is too much. One house lit up on an empty street says it all.
A year after floods wiped out parts of Lismore and devastated surrounding towns and villages in the NSW Northern Rivers region, there are reminders on every street, under every grey cloud and at nightfall.
The Wilsons River at Lismore crept up in the early hours of Monday, February 28 after a month of record rainfall.
The river reached a new high of 14.4 metres by the afternoon, sweeping through more than 3000 homes.
Flooded catchments across the region inundated nearby Murwillumbah, Tumbulgum, Coraki and Woodburn, while a king tide met the swollen Richmond River at Ballina the next day.
The water has long since receded and the mud cleared, but survivors continue to live in a “pressure cooker” of trauma, uncertainty and red tape.
After waves of water rushed through their Ballina home, Jimmy and Janette Britton drove to the top of a hill in Alstonville with their family, including two young grandchildren, and slept in their car for two nights.
For months afterwards, the couple lived in a caravan on their driveway as they rebuilt their house.
When Mr Britton tries to recall those many weeks and months, often nothing is there.
“I was having trouble with my memory. The doctor said, ‘You just blank out, your brain can only take so much’,” he told AAP.
One image he can’t erase from his mind is the family’s muddied and ruined possessions being crushed and loaded into a truck.
“I came from Scotland, I had $100 when I got off the boat. All that I’ve worked for, all those years, it’s all gone.”
Mrs Britton, unsure if she wanted to stay, has only just started hanging up pictures on the walls.
“Every time it rains, my anxiety – and I’ve never suffered from anxiety – it just goes through the roof,” she said.
With a limited insurance payout the couple had no choice but to rebuild, employing a friend and drawing on their own skills.
Like many who lived through the disaster, Mrs Britton is quick to say others have it worse.
“Everybody was destitute. The whole town was just wiped out.”
Lismore resident Rob Bialowas lost everything when water consumed half his riverside house, an art-deco dream home he moved into months earlier.
He fled with friends and his two beloved cats to an evacuation centre before dawn on February 28 after emergency alerts lit up his phone.”I said, ‘everybody out, it’s going to be biblical’,” Mr Bialowas said.
Shocked by the abject despair that filled the centre, he slept in his car outside.
He describes the last year as a period of post-traumatic growth, having used meditation and the arts to turn disaster into an opportunity for change.
“When you’re in pieces … do you want to put yourself back together the way you were?”
While his house sits empty as he waits for insurance, others’ peril brings him to tears.
“A lot of people lost everything. People lost people. Some were already lost before they were lost, living under bridges and on the streets,” he said, his voice fading to a whisper.
“That’s the saddest part, the people who were already lost because nobody knew they existed.”
Many Northern Rivers locals have described a spiral of hopelessness as survivors live in tents, cars, or in houses riddled with black mould.
A Southern Cross University survey of 800 residents showed half were back living in houses that flooded, while a quarter were in temporary accommodation like sheds, pod housing or with family.
About half raised mental health as a major challenge from stressors like the lack of tradespeople, the state of their homes and dealing with insurers and government agencies.
The first buyback offers were made this week to 250 homeowners in the area deemed most at risk of future flooding, part of a $520 million state and federal government program.
Premier Dominic Perrottet has defended the time it took to make the offers, saying the process couldn’t happen overnight.
The federal government also announced the first round of a $150 million resilient infrastructure program, beginning with the upgrade of pumps, drainage and new culverts
But months of uncertainty have taken a toll.
Elly Bird from Resilient Lismore, a community-led recovery effort, said while more government support had rolled in, the long wait added to the distress.
“We have potentially had one of the largest collective experiences of trauma in Australia’s history since Cyclone Tracy,” she said.
“We’ve got PTSD in the community alongside a lack of information and an inability to make decisions. It’s a pressure cooker.”
In the centre of town, where water lapped at the awnings of buildings, it’s the quiet that strikes Lismore mayor and cafe owner Steve Krieg.
About 60 per cent of businesses have returned to the CBD, but the relocation of schools means hundreds of their customers have gone.
“The reality is, it’s going to take many years to get back to normal,” Mr Krieg said.
Some of the council’s work, like opening the region’s road network, clearing 70,000 tonnes of rubbish and planning for a new library, pool and city hall might go unnoticed as people rebuild their lives, he said.
“People’s wellbeing and safety is my number-one concern and it will be until the last person has moved out of danger.”
Driving around rural areas, Col Lee has heard it all: a young family cowering as a tree fell on their house, a farmer and his wife standing on their roof as 200 prize cattle floated away, parents caring for a child with disabilities struggling to live in a caravan.
Mr Lee, the flood coordinator for the Ballina-on-Richmond Rotary club, has been helping people move into donated pod housing.
Small things like watching children play in puddles and seeing rows of darkened, empty houses at night are poignant.
“There are a lot of people out there still suffering enormous hardship … they’re living on nothing,” he said.
“Let people know: don’t forget.”
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