Two months after once in a generation flood hit their town, Cootamundra still counting the cost of a natural disaster

On October 31, 2022, 400 homes were evacuated after a severe weather system hit, bringing around 75mm of rain to the already soaked catchment and causing flash flooding along the Jindalee and Muttama creeks.

Over 80 rapid damage assessments were carried out on impacted properties in the days after the flood, 37 of which were deemed damaged with 23 deemed "not habitable".

The town has also suffered "extensive damage" to infrastructure such as fences, footbridges and road damage.

Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council's Andrew Brock is in charge of the recovery effort and he said it will likely take up to 18 months before the town is back to where it was before the floods.

The number of uninhabitable houses now stands at 22, four of which were uninsured. The process of counting the true cost of the floods will be a slow one, he said.

But in the long term, Mr Brock's main concern in the mental well-being of residents hit hard by the incident.

"There is quite a lot of mental anguish and frustration still going on," he said.

"There's a lot of other things going on in the background that will still need to be monitored and where possible help ... mental health is big in the news. And I think that that's going to be a far greater issue long term than the physical side and houses and stuff like that."

Volunteer organisation BlazeAid were on the ground helping rebuild fences and help clear up affected properties.

The team were in Cootamundra for two months, and camp coordinator Kerrie Bennett said she has seen first hand the "mental strain" flooding places on small communities.

Her team worked right across the Christmas holidays, cleaneing and fixing around 8 km of fencing and helping people across 24 properties.

And locals repaid them with a holiday act of kindness.

"[Residents] were surprisingly resilient. though. It was a very, very welcoming town to go into," she said.

"I had eight [volunteers] working at Christmas time and we were looking for somewhere to go for Christmas dinner. And I actually put it on Facebook, asking is there anything open so that I can take the volunteers out for lunch?

"Well, the invitations, we had that many people respond. And within minutes I had a phone call from one family that just said' I've got a big family coming for Christmas. You're all coming'.

"We had a wonderful time and there was plenty of food and great company and we had a lovely Christmas day."

Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council Mayor Charlie Sheahan said the cost of the flood is yet to be fully tallied, but estimates it will run into the "hundreds of thousands" as they look to fix roads, footbridges and community property around the shire.

He said many residents now face "difficulty" dealing with insurance companies as they seek settlements for their damaged properties.

Cr Sheahan said the council has learnt tough lessons on how best to deal with emergencies in the future.

"It was a good wake up call for all of us in that sense that these events could happen at very short notice, impact us very quickly and we need to be prepared in the future for any any more events like that," he said.

"There are things that we will reassess particularly around evacuation points, having those coordinated more between different emergency services so everyone's on the same page."

And he believes despite the hardships, his town has bounced back quickly - things could have been a lot worse.

"I was just extremely grateful that no one was injured or any loss of life through the event which you know, we have seen happen in other places. So, we're extremely fortunate that way."

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