“The roads have been underwater for a long time.”

Heavy rain and burst creeks have saturated rural properties surrounding the village for months, so that farmers have lost crops or been unable to sow them.

“There’s a bit of fatigue, not so much from the floods but from the rain. We went through years of drought and then the mice plague but this is all part of life on the land,” Pitt said.

Dennis Shrimpton, a disaster welfare co-ordinator for western NSW, said no one in Forbes needed emergency accommodation, as most evacuees were staying at family and friends’ houses.

“It’s a very resilient community; they’ve been through a lot of events,” Shrimpton said.

Elsewhere, the cotton town of Wee Waa is again isolated. An SES high-clearance truck has been delivering bread and milk.

The town has been affected by flooding for weeks, with hopes the waters will recede enough overnight to allow a grocery truck to enter, a shop owner said.

People in three areas of the Riverina city of Wagga Wagga remain under evacuation orders issued earlier in the week.

“Fortunately, the Murrumbidgee River peaked on Thursday and we’re starting to see the floodwaters decline in those areas,” SES spokesman Andrew Edmunds said.

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Overnight, the SES received 264 calls for assistance with five being for flood rescues, including of livestock.

“If people do need assistance, please call 132 500,” Edmunds said. “For those towns, it’s a prolonged campaign, sadly.”

The Bureau of Meteorology says renewed flooding is possible for parts of Central West and South West inland rivers from Friday evening.

A trough approaching from the west of NSW brought rain over the central and southern inland of the state during Thursday and more rainfall forecast for the remainder of Friday.

Flood warnings for renewed flooding from recent rainfall are current for the Belubula, Gwydir and Macquarie rivers.

NSW can expect clear skies and settled weather this weekend but the fortnight ahead will be soggy, with above-median rainfall (greater than 80 per cent chance) on the cards for large parts of the eastern two-thirds of Australia.

Significant falls in northern Victoria will affect the Murray River, leading to possible minor flooding in Albury and other NSW towns on the southern border.

Victorian floods

Heavy rain has severely affected Victoria this week as well.

Homes were flooded in Melbourne and other cities on Friday with rivers forecast to remain dangerously high for days.

About 70 residents were told to leave the suburb of Maribyrnong in Melbourne’s north-west, along with hundreds in the cities of Benalla and Wedderburn, authorities said.

About 500 homes in Victoria were flooded and another 500 had been isolated by floodwater, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said. Those numbers would increase, he said.

Most of the state was experiencing a “very, very, significant rainfall event and it comes, of course, with the ground completely sodden”, Andrews said.

The State Emergency Service said it had carried out 108 flood rescues in Victoria in the past 48 hours.

A 63-year-old man was reported missing in floodwater in NSW on Tuesday and a person was reported missing in the central Victoria of Newbridge on Friday, officials said.

Police on Tuesday found the body of a 46-year-old man in his submerged car in floodwater near the NSW city of Bathurst, west of Sydney, a day after he died.

AAP, AP

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