Farmers impacted by flooding in Dubbo region slowly getting back to normal

When the Bogan River swelled last year and water levels rose, Mrs Wye, an administration assistant at Nyngan Public School and Hermidale Public School, and her husband John Wye, who works for a mining company, became isolated but now they are "driving according to conditions".

The Wyes are just two of a huge number of people on rural properties who were severely affected by last year's flooding.

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Narromine wheat farmer Peter Wilson estimated more than 450 millimetres of rain fell over several months last year due to La Nina, reducing his summer harvest to almost next to nothing.

"It has been a disappointing harvest, it sunk the whole country because of the amount of water that lay on the ground but we're getting alright now," Mr Wilson said.

On the northern farming properties outside of Dubbo, Winsome Mumford said damaged fencing on their cattle paddocks has yet to be repaired with most tradesmen occupied with call out for jobs across farms after the flooding dried up.

But being able to celebrate a "very lovely Christmas and New Year" without worrying over floods was what they were mainly thankful for.

"We've finally had a good break [from floods] but the magnitude of the problem now is potholes and roads that have washed away or fallen off," Mrs Mumford said.

The towns in the western NSW that had been flooded are now slowly recovering but the most important progress is on making rural roads impacted by the floods passable again, Bogan Shire mayor Glen Neill said.

"As far as we know, there are only a couple of roads in the western councils that are still shut but the majority of our roads are now passable," he said.

"Our road blokes have not stopped working ever since, having only a week off for Christmas, and now they're all back in there [repairing roads].

"We've patched whatever we could so that people could go harvesting, but obviously some roads will have to wait until they completely dry up before we can repair them.

"What we've done so far is a band-aid to get people moving."

Mr Glen said the shire he manages is among the 14 members of the Alliance of Western Councils (AWC) that pushed for extra funding to fix an estimated 40,000 kilometres of their combined road networks.

Mr Neil said his shire received $450,000 from the initial $50 million funding allocated by the minister for regional roads and transport Sam Farraway.

Last week a further $500 million for the state's crumbling roads was announced.

"We're no different from other councils anywhere that's been flooded, it will take some time to get our road network repaired but the funding we've chased is called betterment funding," Neill said.

"This funding means we could still get additional future funding for repair which will be a long process, and it won't happen in three months for all roads to get fixed.

"We've spent quite a lot of time and money to make the roads passable, to get people to be able to deliver wheat, crops, stock, and food.

"These repairs will be ongoing and this extra funding is a step in the right direction.

"But the $500 million extra funding is what we truly needed and we'll probably need more but fixing these roads will have to start somewhere."

The stretch of Tottenham Road between Nyngan and the main town of Tottenham is among the rural roads in the Bogan Shire that were prioritised for repair as dozens of farming families in the shire became isolated for months.

"The damage to our roads was significant cutting us off and other families on both sides of the Bogan River and we've seen council trucks prioritising our main road so we can have access," Mrs Wye said.

"Summer harvest is still going on dried-out patches but it's great to see we can get the tractors and trucks coming back.

"Of course, we are aware our car can still get bogged with all forms of damages on our roads."