I grew up with floods on a farm in western Sydney. We had one or two floods over our farm *every* year. Mum & Dad would chuck us kids in the car and we'd drive to see other flooded areas, like the Nepean at Camden, the Hawkesbury at Yarramundi with the highest banks I've seen, and McGrath's Hill as you couldn't get over to Windsor.

The big rivers north of Sydney used to regularly flood, especially Lismore, Grafton, and Singleton. It was NORMAL. None of the more recent flooding has been "unprecedented".

People used to build highset houses, it wasn't just for the heat. It's what you do when you live on a floodplain. Now they build on slabs...