Carisbrook floods one year on: New year, new house

By Hannah Knight
Updated November 7 2012 - 6:48am, first published January 13 2012 - 11:48pm
Geoff and Lisa Cox are building a new home after demolishing their flood damaged miner's cottage.
Geoff and Lisa Cox are building a new home after demolishing their flood damaged miner's cottage.

GEOFF and Lisa Cox have been living in their shed for the past 12 months.The Carisbrook couple’s home, a 100-year-old miner’s cottage, was destroyed in last January’s floods.The old cottage was demolished and they started building their new home in August.They’re expecting to move out of the shed and into the new place next month.

  • Video: Remembering the 2011 Carisbrook floodsThe couple are looking forward to a happier 2012 – last year saw their home inundated with water, reports of looting and a rodent plague.The couple are moving on with their lives but they’re still angry about the lack of information at the time of the floods.“Nobody told us to leave, nobody told us we were going to get flooded,” Geoff said.“It was a bad day all round.”Lisa said emergency personnel told her Carisbrook would not flood.“We went down to the fire station to get information about what was happening and what we could do and they said, ‘Oh look you’re fine it’s not going to flood’,” she said.“I just got a feeling that something was not right ... it was confusing and I didn’t really know what to do. Gallery: Bendigo reader flood pics “So we came home and I could just tell by the water rising that it was going to be quite bad even though we kept being told, ‘Oh you’re right’.“The water was coming in our back gate when we left.”The couple evacuated to Maryborough and stayed in a motel for a few days.“We thought maybe we’d come back to the house flat on the ground,” Lisa said.The miner’s cottage was still standing, but water had crept almost a metre up the walls.A couch blocked the back door, the fridge had floated across the kitchen and everything was covered in mud.“All our personal belongings were basically destroyed,” Lisa said.Their insurance company paid them to fix their house, but they decided to start afresh.“We didn’t want to be living on the ground anymore,” Geoff said.
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