The first thing Bianca Dyball did when she bought her Mooroopna home was raise the house above the 1993 flood level.
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It wasn’t enough.
Four years on from the devastating 2022 floods, she is still rebuilding her home while attempting to prepare for the possibility of another flood.
New research from the Victorian Council of Social Service has warned Victoria is not prepared for its next major flood, with disadvantaged communities facing particular barriers to adapting their homes.
Ms Dyball said she knows first-hand what that preparation can mean.
“I left Saturday morning and by Saturday afternoon the water was through the house,” she said.
“It sat there for 10 days.”
The floodwater damaged her house so severely it had to be stripped back to the studs and rebuilt from the inside out.
Ms Dyball had to wait almost a year before she could begin repairs, staying at a friend’s house, a caravan in her driveway and eventually in a tent in her shed.
“It’s still not complete ... that’s from a combination of running out of funds, running out of energy, running out of everything,” she said.
Her experience is shared by others in the community, with some still struggling to return to their homes.
While much of the community has moved on, Ms Dyball said the flood remained very real for those still rebuilding.
She said too many people thought “the water’s gone away so you’re fine now”.
“This is still very real. It’s becoming a prolonged trauma,” she said.
The VCOSS report has called for a resilient homes program, similar to those operating in Queensland and NSW.
“Victorian homes remain unprepared for the next major flood event, and it will come,” VCOSS director of policy and research Jonathon Gurry said.
“We need to learn how to live with it.”
Mr Gurry said the Victorian Government needed to help households retrofit and strengthen their homes, rather than leaving people to bear the costs themselves.
The report found a growing divide between those who could afford to prepare and those who could not.
“Some people will be able to move or improve their homes, and some won’t and will be stuck in these areas with absolutely no support,” he said.
Ms Dyball said she experienced that gap first-hand.
She said she wasn’t eligible for much government assistance and did not receive a cent from her insurance company, which argued the damage was a drainage issue.
“I discovered the hard way that I’m in a demographic that wasn't considered worth helping,” she said.
“The water didn't care what my income was.
“The water didn't care that I lived in a house on my own. That I lost just as much as everyone else.”
Because she had to fund her recovery herself, Ms Dyball said she did not have the financial capacity to improve her home to withstand another flood.
The experience continues to shape her everyday life.
She refuses to buy anything but metal furniture and can’t quite look at the river in the same way she once did.
Recent flooding brought those fears back to the surface.
“My frightened heart was just like, ‘I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with this,’” she said.
“I was looking at the information every 20 minutes, expecting it to change.”
She could see the water rising every day on her commute from Mooroopna to Shepparton for work.
“It was just reinforcing and re-traumatising ourselves,” she said.
But Ms Dyball is determined to use her experience to help others prepare.
She has become involved with Rotary, the Resilience in Recovery program and Greater Shepparton City Council’s Community Emergency Management Plan development.
“Rotary was an organisation that helped me out a lot when I was a victim of the flood situation,” she said.
“I’m annoyed that it’s taken a flood event like 2022 to open the door for me to connect with people that way.”
Ms Dyball hopes community members can continue to recover and prepare as best they can.
“Nature is still going to be nature. We can’t control it,” she said.
“What’s important is that we work with each other.”