Just over 12 months ago Theresa and Craig Mann spent a small fortune to re-open Rochesters's Criterion Hotel.
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Now the couple don't know when they will be able to again serve up cold drinks and meals following record-breaking flood waters sweeping through their home and business.
After planning to ride out the flood in the hotel, the family left at the last possible minute, pushing a kayak loaded with bags and the family dog through Rochester's submerged streets.
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"We were going to stay right through if we could," Mrs Mann said. "Once it hit our highest point, which is our kitchen and top dining room, we thought it was the right time to get out.
"That was about one or two o'clock on the Friday. I had a bag packed already. We had our son-in-law's kayak. Our 14-year-old dog was stressing and we set him in the kayak with another couple of bags and walked out.
"It wasn't too bad until we got to the corner here. It was just flowing really fast and the dog decided jump off the kayak. I hoisted him back it up by his harness and we just walked up across the railway line to our son's in Queen Street.
"We were there for about half an hour and an hour and then evacuated out of there as well. He went up to Lockington and we went to Echuca to my sister's and have been there since then."
Mr Mann returned on Sunday to assess the damage before the rest of the family arrived on Monday to start a mammoth clean-up effort.
"It was 230mm higher (than last time). The 2011 flood didn't go through the top dining room," Mrs Mann said. "The old publican told us to get everything up in that top dining room where it'll be dry. So most of everything was up there.
"Where we live because we live on site, we've got all that pressure washed but the plaster and stuff like that still has to come up, all the carpets are out.
"We're gonna try and get everything back up in the top dining room in case there's more rain and it decides to go through again. That way everything's dry.
"Then we will try and get into the bar area try and clean that up a bit."
Before the Mann family purchased the Criterion, it had been shut up and was in need of repairs.
Mrs Mann said the family-run business had spent $100,000 to bring it the hotel to code ahead of reopening.
"We've only had it for just over 12 months. We opened on a Saturday and by Thursday we got closed because of COVID," she said.
"It had shut down for a month or two but maintenance and upkeep hadn't been the top priority. It took us a lot to get it back to code because we had to get it checked by council before we could open it.
"Unfortunately, we put $100,000 in getting it open because we had to bring it all back up to code and cleanliness.
"Considering we just opened and we were trying to win people back as well because it was closed for a bit and was rundown.
"We've also got an ice cream shop connected to the hotel that would be sort of started picking up with the warmer weather. We were not quite breaking even but we were picking up."
Now the family is facing a months-long clean up to be able to reopen again.
"It's gonna be probably months because we can't get flood insurance because of where we are," Ms Mann said.
"No pub in Australia can get flood insurance. But the landlord's got an assessor coming up for his insurance the building insurance side of it but I don't know if the floods are covered in that."
Ms Mann urged fellow Rochester residents to stay strong and hoped surrounding communities would help support businesses once they re-opened.
"We will have a lot of work to do to get this (right)," she said. "People need to stay safe and just keep soldiering on. Basically, it's all we can do."
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