Community rallies to support survivors, after Kiwi mum and two children die in floodwaters

A devastated Gold Coast community is rallying around a widowed father and his lone surviving child, after the mother and two children died in a river tragedy.

New Zealander Stephanie King, 43, died trying to save her children, 7-year-old son Jacob and 11-year-old daughter Ella-Jane.

Their car careered off the road into the flooded Tweed River on Monday, with the three bodies pulled from the submerged car yesterday afternoon.

Tweed Byron LAC Chief Inspector Mick Dempsey told News Corp that King was found "holding a child" and that he had no doubt "she was a hero".

"She would still be alive if she wasn't trying to save her children," he said.

Chloe, 8, managed to escape the car and ran screaming for help.

It's been suggested she only escaped because her mother helped her.

Father, Matt Kabealo, is a chef at the Kingscliff Bowling Club.

General manager Phil Kelly said they and the rest of the community just wanted to do what they could to help Kabealo and Chloe.

"If Chloe didn't manage to get out of that car, that family may never ever have been found.

"That family could have just disappeared off the face of the earth, and no one would ever have known.

"Matt's mum is with him. She's trying to be strong for the family, they're a lovely close-knit family.

"It's a hard time with only just recovering the bodies, so the family is grieving."

The Club Managers Association of Australia (CMAA) had set up a Go Fund Me page to support Matt and Chloe.

Stephanie King with her eldest daughter Ella-Jane Kabealo, aged 11, died when their car plunged into the Tweed River. Photo / Supplied via Facebook

As of 8pm last night, it had reached $23,830.

Kelly said they just wanted to ease what burdens they could.

"Losing three members of your family, well, I don't know how you ever overcome that.

"But they're going to have a lot of bills coming in, and he's not going to be able to work for a while.

"So it's important we give him all the financial support we can.

"Then he can deal with what he has to deal with, without the financial burdens hanging over his head."

Kelly said all the staff at the club were devastated by the tragedy, so he'd organised a professional counsellor to come in today.

King was raised in Auckland, studying at Selwyn College before moving to Australia.

Before her death she worked at Opal Aged Care Tweed Heads. Before that, she worked at the Tweed Heads Bowls Club.

Devastated friends have expressed their shock on social media.

Police divers arrive to recover a submerged car from the Tweed River. Photo / News Ltd

One wrote earlier: "It makes me sick knowing a beautiful family is still in the water, such a precious loss to all that knew you, I know I will miss you terribly".

One neighbour, Steven Moller, told News Corp he saw King just the other day.

"They were a perfectly normal family, I would see her loading her kids into the car," he said.

Former police officer Matthew Grinham was driving by floodwaters at Tumbulgum on Monday afternoon when he saw a girl hysterically screaming while running along the road, yelling that her mum, little sister and brother were trapped in the river in the car.

"We pulled up just after the car went under," Grinham recalled, speaking to the Daily Telegraph.

"She couldn't say much, she just said, 'My mum, my little sister and my [older] brother have gone in the river in a car'."

Grinham said he initially thought a calf had fallen in the water, but realised the situation was dire and leapt into action.

"I looked down on the road and saw the skid marks of a car, its tracks were in the mud and I just jumped in," he told the Australian.

The Tumbulgum local described the freezing and "horrible" murky flood waters, and the sense of despair when he realised he wouldn't be able to retrieve the car and the family members it was carrying.

"The helplessness of not being able to find the car, the bubbles were there, we could find the bubbles, we just couldn't get to the car," he said.

"At first we were going to go feet first, just pushing down to try and see if we could feel it with our feet. I tried a couple of times, but the bubbles, they trailed away.

"They just got less and less."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had offered consular assistance to the father and daughter.

The tragedy is the latest in what has been a devastating few days for flood-hit northern NSW residents, with two women aged 36 and 64 confirmed dead and a man dying of a heart attack.