Six months on: Why some Eugowra residents feel forgotten and alone

Mr Woodford loves the Rabbitohs and a beer, while Mr Arnoll's "she'll be 'right" mantra is no doubt helping most in Eugowra pick themselves back up after November's heart-breaking floods.

But, six months on, the toll of it all is wearing thin.

Without a home and winter's grip firming on the Central West, Mr Woodford admits his plight is "depressing". He says insurance battles and other forms of red tape for those hoping to rekindle their lives are making many disheartened.

Mr Arnoll might not even be physically able to climb the steep descent into the pod home set aside for him. The 87-year-old now has a walking cane and his makeshift home, not yet liveable, is "six feet in the air".

These are just two people's stories; though many in the tiny town of Eugowra are feeling forgotten.

'Get the f--- out of here, because there's a wall of water coming down the road.'

That's the abrupt phrase Ken Woodford would hear before escaping the November 14 flood that gutted Eugowra.

Leaning against his Holden 1997 white Commodore, the 64-year-old retired fridge builder has been displaced ever since.

The unprecedented inland tsunami swallowed the town six months ago to the day on Sunday, May 14. The official peak of water reached around 11.2 metres high.

Mr Woodford is still living in a government-issued caravan at the showgrounds on the outskirts of town, cut in half by the Mandagery Creek.

"It ain't much fun, that's for sure," he said.

"The only thing that's left standing of [my former home] is the brick building itself. Everything else inside of it, gone down the river."

Mr Woodford was evacuated after the flood to Orange's CSU campus where he stayed for eight days.

He then spent one week in an Orange-based motel battling a case of COVID he'd picked up along the way. Before the floods, he lived in an assisted living residential block for 16 years.

He was in a row of five, side-by-side ground level units on Evelyn Street in the block opposite the police station. Their relocation into pod homes is "a priority" that is yet to happen.

Still waiting, they've been biding their time from mobile homes as winter in the west draws closer.

"If I had five dollars for every time someone told me [we were a priority], I'd be able to buy two cartons of beer," Mr Woodford said.

"The pods are there [now], but not much else has been done. [It makes me feel] depressed. To look at it now, it's just depressing.

"It's just a matter of time, it's just a waiting game, for me personally and a few others. [We were] hoping to be in there before this cold weather kicked in, but that ain't happening."

Clothing flung over inventive washing lines. Children's toys in between most caravans. There's now less than 10 mobile homes in the town after they were "dead set everywhere" in January.

One of Ken Woodford's four neighbours is said to be a 45-minute drive away, living in Cowra with her adult son.

Another continues in a local multipurpose service, believed unlikely to return home.

Like Mr Woodford, the two remaining have been living in the row of caravans at the shared site on Oberon Street; an area resembling a small shanty town of sorts.

One of them is Graham Arnoll.

The 87-year-old was playing golf just six months ago but since the floods, he's developed a new respiratory problem and uses a walking cane to steady his balance.

Volunteering at the town's recently reopened Craft on the Creek store, he's lived in Eugowra for 22 years. He said he'd never seen anything like it.

"It was unbelievable," Mr Arnoll said of November 14, describing fast-rising floodwater and the surge attached to it.

"I've seen a lot of disasters around the world, but nothing like that."

A retired toymaker who made "very popular" items with cypress wood, his hobby work shed is now no more.

"I used to make toys, wooden toys made of cypress pine and I'd varnish them," he said, "but I'm getting a bit long in the tooth."

With the toymaker still without a definitive time or date for when he can move into his government-issued home on stilts, Mr Arnoll lives in limbo.

"I'm due to move very shortly, hopefully, into a pod. There are three pods six feet in the air, one of them is mine," he said.

"The reason they're six foot (high) is that's where the flood level was and to get us up there well, they're putting three invalids up there."

SLIDER: This house almost took out George and Sue during the flood and landed in the middle of this round. Shift the slider and see how six months on, the area is looking more like a village street.

To talk with Eugowra residents, most (if not all) people burst with verbal gratitude for the support they've received.

But when "the help" disappeared and the timeframes for rebuilding their lives became increasingly murky, that left the gate open for uncertainty, frustration and sadness.

"In the beginning it was good, because everybody was here helping us out and we appreciated everything," Mr Woodford said.

"What the problem is now [is that] we seem like we're left to our own devices. Town morale is great, it really is.

"But everyone's getting disheartened because people are having trouble with insurance companies and the rest."

Mr Woodford said while he's thankful for receiving government-assisting funding, he hasn't purchased any household items because there's "nowhere to put it".

Keeping himself as occupied as possible in the ongoing waiting game, he said residents are all digging their way out of similar battles.

Some have had to deal with gut-wrenching losses.

"It's hard some days, but my story pales in significance compared to some of the others I've heard" Mr Woodford said.

"People who have lost houses and businesses, families who've lost loved ones I don't want my story exaggerated [and overshadow theirs].

"Yes, I've lost everything I own, apart from this poor old girl. But I class myself as one of the lucky ones in that sense."

Left (very literally) with just the clothes on his back, Mr Woodford spoke proudly of his cherished South Sydney Rabbitohs merchandise.

Displayed in the "the poor old girl's" rear window, they're essentially the only salvageable items he has left.

Nearly all of Mr Woodford's personal belongings were washed away, or are gone.

"I've been in some hairy situations in my life, I'll admit, but that was the scariest I've ever been in and I don't wish that on anybody," he said.

Making it to Eugowra Showgrounds and after it all "settled down", Mr Woodford went out to the streets.

"I took a drive out the gate later that day and I guarantee you, I thought it was one of those bombs from the war that just dropped and devastated the town," he said.

"I thought I was in a movie to tell you the truth. You couldn't go within 100 yards outside that gate without having tears in your eyes."

Mr Woodford said Eugowra went from a speck on the map to a place the whole country became familiar with overnight.

And if it existed, he'd fast be in a time machine to undo the destruction.

"I'd sooner go back to November 12 last year because I liked it the way that it was. It was just quiet, peaceful and friendly, basically like a small country town's supposed to be," he said.

"But now, what we had is gone."

Mr Woodford said if another flood hit to the extent it did in November, he'd move away from Eugowra.

And while some services and businesses are slowly reopening, reminders of that day still impact and haunt the majority of its residents.

"I'll be gone if I survive the next [deluge]," he said.

"The supermarket's going and once everything gets back to some sort of normality, yeah, [the town] might come back, but it won't be the same as it was. Which, for me, is really sad.

"But I really can't say for sure what tomorrow's going to bring. I'm just trying to get through today like everybody else here in town."

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