It was one of the largest floods the region had ever seen but it was also the start of Nowra developing as a town, as the people of Terara moved to higher ground.
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The Shoalhaven correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald documented the heartrending account of the 1870 flood, the worst flood the region had seen at the time.
Rain had fallen consistently for ten weeks, followed by a large gale from the east.
Following the large winds, the river broke over the bank, and continued to rise throughout the day, reaching its highest point at midnight and remaining there for about seven hours.
The destruction of property and loss of life was immense.
Dr McKenzie's barn was gone and so was John Glanville's. Ruston's, Ruane's, and Lamond's old shops had been taken by the flood.
At Terara, Binder's house, Armstrong's saddler's shop, the post and telegraph offices, M'Garvie's old shop, and two other houses were gone.
But the story of the Goulding family was particuarly horrific.
In Numba, James Goulding's house and barn was taken but the flood also took his family.
In the barn were three of his children and grandchild, and a girl named Kelly.
Feeling the barn going, they knocked out the slabs and were escaping when Julia, the eldest, dropped her baby and while picking it up was washed down.
Her brother James, the next eldest, tried to help her but was also washed down. All three were drowned with their sister Mary, and Kelly.
None of their bodies were discovered right away, except that of the child, which was found hanging on a pouch tree about half a mileaway from where the accident occurred.
Also in Numba stores were submerged and whole herds wiped off stations.
The journalist at the time painted a awful picture of the floods.
"The scene at Terara is desolate in the extreme," he said.
"Dead horses, drawing room tables, posts and rails, couches, pigs, calves, buggies turned over, and sanded-up roofs of houses, galvanized iron, brass and iron bedsteads, and debris of every description half-buried in sand."
With the devastation some townsfolk took it upon themselves to drink.
"I am sorry to say that, amid all the desolation, there were men who could not restrain their evil propensities, but were rolling drunk from one public-house to another, disgusting to anyone having the slightest feeling of humanity in their breasts."
Information provided by the Shoalhaven Historical Society.