First some pictures - they tell the story best:

Yesterday i went into Lismore to do my shopping. It's more than two weeks after the event but the devastation is still plain to see. The road flows downstream with the creek. For 30 km's virtually the entire road was underwater - with all houses (except for a few on the hills) flooded. You know that coz the contents of the houses have been turned inside out - it's all in a parade of sad piles along the edge of the road. The farm fences are festooned with thick grass and debris all along the route At a road repair stop i looked at some trees along the creek, you can see the level was 20-30 metres above it's normal level.

Then when you get to Lismore it's mind-boggling. The water has long receded - it goes down pretty fast - but I'd estimate a populated area of the town about 10 x 5 km wide was underwater. Basically the whole town. Some of the trash has been cleared but a lot hasn't - another failing in the response. These people can't start to heal when they still have to look at destruction of their broken lives piled up on the street.

There's a suburb called Goonelabah which is up on the surrounding hills - that was fine - it's where i did the shopping. All the shops i normally go to were flooded and are still closed.

Doing the shopping the feeling of post-trauma was palpable - you could see it in the faces of the people - drained of life - it's like a zombie town with zombie people. I heard some laughter from a couple of little kids - it sounded weird - they don't really know - everyone else looked beaten down, quiet. The clerk told me people were breaking down in tears at the check-out when she asked the standard 'How are you today?' She found herself hugging customers to console them.

One thing i noticed, no-one was wearing masks - like zero people. There were still signs asking you to wear masks and practice social distancing in the supermarket, but they seemed to be from a long-ago world.

In the courtyard area a Aboriginal busker guy with a beautiful country-western voice was singing Imagine there's no heaven