Angie and Mike Armstrong are being treated to a week of waterfront views all from the comfort of their own home.
The local farmers and business owners have had water around their house for over a week and “getting things done” is getting tough for them.
The Armstrong’s property, ‘Callubri’, has been wet since July, Mrs Armstrong said things started “filling up” around the start of August and again since the start of September.
“As farmers we don’t like to complain about rain, but it does provide some challenges,” Mrs Armstrong said.
“[There’s] a lot of mud and slit and we were lucky to avoid waters coming into our house this time around. This is the fifth largest flood we have in our farm records since 1950.”
The Armstrongs have stocked up their cupboards and done as much preparation work as they can in case they’re completely cut off.
“We had to move stock from one quarter of our property to higher country in June and it will need to be dry for at least four weeks before they can go back out to this area,” Mrs Armstrong said.
“We have kept a close eye on the health of our stock and have been moving sheep to ensure they have enough feed and won’t become isolated in the event of further rain/flood waters.”
The Armstrongs ewes are currently in lamb, so they’ve had to keep a close eye on them.
“We have to carefully consider their future feed requirements as we prefer not to move them once they are more advanced in their pregnancy or with young lambs afoot,” Mrs Armstrong said.
“Unfortunately this year we also had rain during shearing which caused some delays. Our crops have been affected by rain, however most of our cropping is on red soil hills which has had only minor water logging. We just need to hope for no rain at harvest time now.”
“The farm has also had to invest in additional machinery to ensure we can store grain on farm in the event the roads are not safe to use at harvest time,” she said.
Mrs Armstrong said the roads to and from their house are currently covered in water.
“When the river floods our road access gets cut in both directions. The road to Nevertire was cut on Tuesday and the road to Nyngan went under water late Wednesday (September 7),” Mrs Armstrong said.
“Heading towards Nevertire the roads are getting quite rough, but the road to Nyngan seems to be okay even though it has been under water at least three times this year.
“Council did a great job last time they resurfaced the road it is holding up a lot better than previous years.”