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As Melanie and Martin returned to their home in Separation Creek on Thursday, they were met with an overwhelming surge of water.
“We heard a series of loud cracks and roars,” Melanie recounted, “and then, unbelievably, we watched as the bed from our second bedroom, perfectly made with pillows and duvets, was swept under the bridge and out to sea.”
“It was surreal,” she continued, “watching the water rush down the creek, taking the land away right before our eyes.”
What was once a single property with rooms on both sides of the creek is now divided completely.
The powerful torrent not only dislodged the bridge from its foundation but also ravaged the area they had painstakingly restored 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.Â
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.