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For nearly a decade, Sasha Mainsbridge has lived on a flood plain where the risk of flood is a part of life.
But she wasn't prepared for what was to come when the Brunswick River, immediately behind her Mullumbimby home, flooded in February 2022.
"Flooding is nothing like what you imagine until it's happened to you," she says.
Ms Mainsbridge and her eldest son stacked towels up against doors and got whatever possessions they could off the floor.
But their standard 1990s brick-veneer, Gyprock-interior home didn't stand a chance.
"All of a sudden, we're in the lounge and we heard this gushing waterfall noise, and it was actually the force of the water pushing the Gyprock away from the wall above the skirting board, and there was just water pouring in above the skirting board," she says.
"I just had no idea."
In the aftermath, she faced the mammoth task of rebuilding. It came with the added challenge of what she called a "pretty disappointing" lack of information from the New South Wales government and a "hard no" from her insurance companies to rebuild with more flood-resilient modifications.
So, Ms Mainsbridge took matters into her own hands.
She's one of many Australians adapting their homes to make them more resilient to increasing weather extremes such as floods, storms, cyclones and bushfires.
Queensland leads in flood-resilient homes
Ms Mainsbridge researched international evidence and looked to the Queensland Government's flood resilience framework for advice on how to rebuild after the flood.
"I sought all the best information on flood-resilient rebuilding … and I took all of the advice that I could find," she says.
Ms Mainsbridge's new kitchen features removable cabinets, a removable benchtop and raised cupboards. (Supplied)
Libby Ba-Pe is an architect and an associate at JDA Co, an architecture firm specialising in flood, fire and storm resilience.
She says Queensland is leading the way in developing flood-resilient homes in Australia.
After the 2011 floods in Brisbane and South East Queensland, Brisbane City Council's Flood Resilient Homes Program, which Ms Ba-Pe was involved in managing, invested public money into adapting homes to be more flood resilient.
The program also educated Queenslanders about their flood risks, so they could be better prepared.
Ms Ba-Pe guided home owners through their retrofits, and the council picked up the bill for all works, meaning adaptations were available irrespective of financial capacity.
By the time the 2022 floods happened, she says she could see "in real life, real-time" the program's success and "a big cost benefit … just from rebuilding".
Later that year, the Queensland government announced the Resilient Homes Fund: a $741 million recovery program to help residents across the state adapt their homes.
"That included retrofit work [and] home raising … and there was a buyback scheme as well," Ms Ba-Pe says.
"Queensland was the first in Australia to do that."
She says some home adaptations — including raising hot water units and air conditioners, and separating the upstairs and downstairs circuits — can seem like "common sense".
"But often people don't feel empowered to ask for them."
How to retrofit for flood resilience
Ms Mainsbridge shared the results of all her research with her community, door-knocking neighbours and using her network through her sustainability non-profit, Mullum Cares.
She's also shared the steps she took to retrofit her home.
That includes ripping up the tiles throughout her home and replacing them with polished concrete.
While it's not certain how well tiles will endure a flood, polished concrete — which can be sprayed down after a flood — "is not a material that may or may not survive … there's no question", she says.
She also raised her power points. Wall sheets come in set heights and she says often, after a flood, the whole bottom sheet is ripped off to be replaced. If the power points are in that bottom part of the wall, they'll be ripped off, too.
Now all her power points sit above 1.2 metres high.
Another significant change she's made is that her walls no longer extend all the way to the floor. There's a 30-centimetre skirting board throughout the house, which sits between the wall and the floor.
"The idea is, when we flood again, we wait for the flood to be over, and then we gently take off all these … skirting boards in the whole house."
This allows water to pass through and out, rather than pooling in her home.
Ms Mainsbridge with her new walls that don't run all the way to the floor. (Supplied)
From bathroom to 'fortress'
Another home adaptation Ms Mainsbridge is passionate about encouraging others to consider is in the bathroom.
"It's all the trades that you have to line up one after the other that really puts so much strain on the rebuild," she says.
"Bathrooms require more trades than anywhere else."
And while living without a kitchen is an option for a while, it's impossible to live without a bathroom.
"So you've got to find a way to stop the flood waters threatening the bathroom," she says.
In her rebuild, she removed the bottom half of the bathroom's timber frame and replaced it with concrete blocks, on top of which she re-laid all Gyprock with cement sheets.
"It's like a fortress," she says. "Flood waters just can't breach it."
Turning her bathroom into a "fortress" was a priority for Ms Mainsbridge, who says not having a bathroom means not being able to stay at home after a disaster. (Supplied)
'What's the next one going to look like?'
Ms Ba-Pe would like to see insurers "put their money where their mouth is".
She says more insurance companies need to recognise adaptations people have made to their homes, and in turn lower their insurance premiums, which have skyrocketed for those in flood- and fire-prone areas.
"Insurance doesn't [just] affect the people who get flooded … it affects everybody. Everyone's premiums go up. So in future, some houses and whole neighbourhoods will just be completely uninsurable.
"Where does it leave the people in these communities?"
Jean Renouf, the founder and CEO of disaster resilience organisation Plan C, says the memory of the 2022 floods is still "very present" in his community of Lismore, where the impact of the event was also severe.
"The trauma was quite profound … [It was] a humanitarian crisis," he says.
"The disruption was severe and affected not just the immediate safety of the people, but also the loss of a sense of comfort and confidence … [It was a] feeling that the world was upside down. That was profoundly traumatising, in a way that was probably unprecedented in this region."
Community members live with the knowledge that flooding will happen again.
"[Lismore] is a flood plain, so it's normal. The whole region gets flooded. That's part of living here, and people get used to it to certain extents," Dr Renouf says.
"But with the climate crisis, the scale of the flood becomes slightly different. You wonder, [what's] the next one going to look like?
"We can't just judge future events by past experience."
For many, there's a negative mental health impact attached to that reality, but living in a more resilient home can help.
Ms Ba-Pe says community members involved in the Brisbane Resilient Homes Program conducted surveys to measure their anxiety before and after their homes were adapted.
"Anxiety went way down," she says.
Several councils across Queensland have flood level information for people's homes online, but Ms Ba Pe says the details can be difficult for a layperson to interpret.
She'd like to see programs like Flood Resilient Homes, which guided people through adaptations appropriate for their specific circumstances, to be rolled out in more places in Australia.
"It'd be good for other states in Australia to follow what Queensland has been doing."