18-07-2025
Mid North Coast community traces Manning River flood history
For residents living on the New South Wales Mid North Coast, the recent record-breaking flood event may be the worst natural disaster they have witnessed in their lifetime.
In May, the Manning River reached a record high of 6.44 metres at Martin Bridge, submerging Taree and large stretches of the coast.
The flood surpassed the previous record of 5.9 metres set in the 1929 flood, but for some in the community, there is a sense of history repeating itself.
Ross Murray has traced his family roots in the region back hundreds of years, discovering a deep and tragic connection to floods.
Birpai elder Russell Saunders' connection to the country stretches back even further, as his ancestors were traditional custodians of the land for tens of thousands of years.
From his house in the high ground of Tinonee, Uncle Russ, as he is known by his community, watched the most recent floodwaters rise across the plains where, as a child, he would fish with his father.
"It looked like a big lake," Uncle Russ said.
Uncle Russ is an artist and language teacher and has long been a custodian of cultural knowledge.
He learned to spot the signs of a coming flood from his father and the elders of his community.
"Dad taught us a lot of signs and wonders about reading the river," he said.
"I remember one time I saw carpet snakes near the bank, first one, then another, about a dozen all up.
He said when they saw the black cockatoos flying over as kids, the elders used to always tell them that rain was coming.
"When you see the ants pile up their nest like a little volcano, that's a sign of floods coming," he said.
Uncle Russ's eldest brother, Ray, has been a licensed fisherman since 1975, and this cultural knowledge has helped his craft.
"White ants start flying out of the forest looking for holes in trees to move into another nesting area — they called them storm ants.
"Wild ducks gather on the banks of the river when spring water from aquifers starts flowing — small fish swim upstream feeding on nutrients rising to the top of the water when this occurs on the water."
This May was the worst flood Ray had ever seen, but he remembers his elders recalling big floods before 1929.
"He said to the elder about the 1929 flood, 'This is a big flood,' and the elder said, 'No, we've had bigger ones than this.'"
Perhaps, the elders were referring to the 1857 flood.
Ross Murray's roots run deep in the region, and he discovered newspaper clippings with details about earlier floods while researching his Scottish ancestors for a book he wrote about them.
"Our greatest catastrophe" reads one of the many weathered newspaper clippings from Mr Murray's father's archive, detailing floods from as far back as the 1800s.
The 1857 floods were also a catastrophe for the Murray family, with one of Ross' ancestors killed while trying to save livestock.
The Murrays had travelled from Scotland to Australia in the 1800s and established farms in the Manning district, between Wingham, Oxley Island and Darawank, and Tinonee.
The newspapers from 1857 revealed how his ancestors were impacted by floods.
"The public punt at Tinonee has gone, and also the pub man's house with its entire contents. One storekeeper at Tinonee lost not less than 2,000 pounds." the newspaper clipping read.
"The reference to the Ferry Inn in Tinonee, which was my great-great uncle's business — George Murray — was entirely submerged, the family barely having time to escape with their lives," Ross said.
"No-one ever really expected that that 1929 flood peak would be exceeded, and, of course, that's exactly what's happened."
A newspaper from 1929 recorded the seven-day rainfall total as the equivalent of 822 millimetres.
Ross said, looking through the 1929 reports, there were many features of the floods that didn't seem to change.
"Isolation caused by high water levels and the washing away of bridges and culverts was a huge problem in 1929," he said.
"Residents at both Croki and Old Bar reported continuous streams of furniture, vegetables, cattle carcases, hay and other items carried by the torrent. "
Ross said he wondered what his ancestors would think about the latest floods.
"I think they'd be amazed at how far it came up," he said.
Uncle Russ said that when a flood was coming, the once nomadic people would move to high ground and camp up in the hills.
"We used to move with the seasons. Now we're fixed in one place," he said.
Uncle Russ said the landscape had also changed since he was a child and, as such, the damage from floods was more extensive.
"We see the damage now because I look across the farmland now, and all I see is roofs of houses and water," he said.
