Clean up underway after weekend floods left Berry covered in debris

The worst of the rain was on Saturday April 6, The Bureau of Meteorology recorded 138 millimetres of rainfall in Broughton Creek during the 24 hours to 9am, just 2 kilometres outside of Berry.

Father and son Michael and Casey Ziebell from Berry had three shipping containers float off their property, taken by flood waters and landed over 200 metres away.

"At the back of our house we've got the creek running through and around 6.30am it peaked and then being high tide we couldn't get away," Casey said.

"It was right up to our back verandah and our dog almost got swept away,"

Their shipping containers were full of Michael's late wife's belongings washed down stream in the flood.

"You can't do nothing about it, we've had floods before but never as bad as this, even all the long time locals here have never seen it like this," Michael said.

"One of our neighbour's just drove past and they'd lost a bull, they were putting horses away and when they turned back around their bull was gone."

Larry Bramley lived around Berry his whole life and said he'd never seen anything like it before, but with no flood insurance they had no option but to get on with the clean up.

"I think this is very painful and mind you, they did say there'd be some localised flooding, but it affected us really badly," Mr Bramley said.

"I've lived here all my life and I've never seen it like this.

"It has flooded, but this time it was right up to our house which was very unusual.

"I've only really lost infrastructure, like our sheds, including the horse shed, so I'm looking at about $10,000, the trouble is every time you report it you can't get any insurance because they say well now you're on a flood plain.

"As long as the house didn't wash away, then it's alright I suppose."

Debris from his flattened sheds, including a chicken coop ended up hundreds of metres away, his tool shed also flooded and machinery was waterlogged, but family arrived shortly after the rain stopped to help clean up.

His daughter in-law Amy Bramley said their horses were knee deep in water and the flood was lapping at their back step.

"We said to move the cars, get some bags packed and keep on the look out," Ms Bramley said.

"We still can't find the chickens, and the boys are saying they could see cows floating away earlier."

"Everything like the lawn mower and tractor seems to be starting, but there's thousands of tools in the shed covered in mud."

Berry locals Nina and Craig Babic had water lapping up to the back step of their house and two seperate builds on the same property flooded, including their healing room where they frequently saw clients.

Ms Babic said they were woken by the gurgling of their toilet backing up from rising flood water.

"We just woke up to this glug, glug, glug sound," Ms Babic said.

"Up the road, nothing happened there, it was mainly this area and the poor bowling club."

"We just saw everything get washed away.

Mr and Ms Babic said there was no use stressing over what had happened, despite having thousands of dollars of equipment waterlogged, a trailer misplaced, a new caravan flooded and their motor home covered in mud.

"Our trailer is off under the railway bridge, it took me an hour to find it," Mr Babic said.

"We don't stress about things you can't control though.

"Our caravan was bobbing in the water and we'd only just picked it up on Tuesday."