Photo recall: Quick flood brought years of struggle

As eastern Australia battles a slow-motion disaster that has left lives and homes destroyed by violent floodwaters, two Taranaki farmers look back on the day a freak rainstorm ravaged their valley. File Photo / NZ Herald

It took only two hours for a fierce flood to dump a fallen forest on the McBreartys' most valuable land. Jan McBrearty was cooking apples on the banks of the Mohakitano River near Mokau on March 21, 1992, when the rain started. She retreated to the house then watched as the river's water level surged "like a bath filling up".

Jan's husband, Peter, had ventured out on his motorbike to check on the other side of the river when a slip suddenly blocked his return path and he was forced to walk back.

"It rained so hard. It was coming off the hills as high as a pair of RedBand gumboots," said Peter.

The couple raced to free their eight dogs tethered on the riverbank but had no time to release four rams and three pigs before the water's force and floating logs smashed through farm fences and destroyed their bridge. "We had to stand there and watch the rams being washed away," said Jan.

By 5.30pm, the sun was shining and floodwaters had receded, leaving huge trees sluiced from nearby bush littered across the McBrearty's prize paddocks. "They were as big as a beached whale," said Peter.

In an article published in the New Zealand Herald at the time, Peter is quoted: "We'll never get it back like it was." Those words proved prophetic.

The McBreartys spent years rehabilitating their land. Jan said she would get 20 pairs of gloves delivered at a time because the silt that flood waters left behind was so abrasive.

"They were fairly stressful times over those years," said Peter, who suffered a heart attack in 2002.

At one stage things got so tough they nearly walked off the land but an insurance assessor persuaded them to stick it out. "He said, 'If you walk away, you walk away with nothing,"' said Jan. "We just had to stay."

Eventually, the McBreartys sold their flood-scarred land and moved to a smaller farm near the coast - where there is no flooding danger. "At least we sleep easy down here," said Jan. "Every time it rained up there, we couldn't sleep."