Daily London
Melanie and Martin were arriving at their Separation Creek home when the water came screaming through on Thursday.
“We heard this cracking, roaring, cracking, and watched as our bed in our second bedroom just literally flew out under the bridge, fully made up, pillows, duvets out to sea,” Melanie said.
“Literally just watched this water torrenting down the creek and the land slipping away before our eyes.”
The property once had rooms on both sides of the creek but it has been completely separated.
The force of the water tore the bridge off its foundations and destroyed the area the couple had revegetated with thousands of native plants.
“It’s almost surreal, like you’re watching a movie, this thing torrenting down,” Martin said.
“You could actually hear timber crashing, like absolutely thundering down, and it was just getting more and more intense.”
Their neighbour Peter Jacobs has lived in the area for 36 years.
He and his wife were trying to save their chickens when they were forced to run for their lives.
“I looked up and there was a wall, a tsunami of trees, ferns, water, and just the noise was extraordinary, and I just looked in total dismay,” he said.
“And I said, ‘get out, we’ve got to get out’.”
The couple managed to leave and have since been left isolated without power and a huge clean-up ahead of them.
Jacobs is hoping the council will arrive soon to assist.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said.
“We can recover, but we just need some help, I need some help.”
A few kilometres away at Wye River the clean up began first thing this morning after water bulldozed its way through the town.
A large group of Country Fire Authority volunteers arrived to help.
One of the biggest tasks was rescuing two stranded cars that had been washed away.
Crews used a winch and a four-wheel-drive to salvage what was left of a Mazda.
The Volkswagen, which was trapped at sea on a rock, was also moved with some heavy machinery.
Many residents in the town of Wye River put their hands up to help with the massive clean-up and brought their families along.
“We’ve been cleaning up the bridge at the park and there’s been a lot of rubbish everywhere,” one child said.
