People watched helpless from the Kyogle railway station as six persons drowned when their home was washed away. A mother and her two children drowned when a small rescue boat capsized in waves on Fawcetts Plain. An aboriginal man was caught in floodwaters and drowned. Others were washed away but survived by clinging to trees until rescuers arrived.

Glenn Martin author of the book "Places in the Bush a History of Kyogle Shire" wrote ‘The flood of 1887 is said to have been higher than either of these floods. After the 1954 flood and early settler maintained that the height at Unumgar in 1887 was fifteen feet higher, and the height at Kyogle was ten feet higher’. The other flood he refers to is the 1956 flood which reached a height of 57feet 6inches, or 17.5 metres.

The cyclonic wind and rain on that day in February 1954 gave the North Coast national attention. In Kyogle ten houses were destroyed and approximately nineteen or twenty were lifted off their foundations and swept away. Many miles of fencing and fourteen bridges swept away and complete herds of cattle, pigs and crops were lost to the raging waters, however perhaps the biggest tragedy was the loss of ten people whom drowned in the swollen waters.

Due to the damage of most houses many of the residents of Wiangaree were forced to move to the higher ground of the local school and some even spent the night on the platform of the railway station. The district roads were also effected and closed as a result of landslides and debris deposited on them. Telephone lines washed away and railway lines north and south of Kyogle were gone or atleast damaged in some way.

I must mention here while I think of it, Matt Dougherty used a life-saving reel in an attempt to reach the Golding family. Trying to escape the flood the family were swimming through the raging water near the railway station. Matt received a bravery medal for his efforts.

Relief organisations were soon in operation, distributing clothing and tinned food from Warwick, aswell as fodder from Tabulam. My wife whom was helping with the clean-up on the flat told me that Norco arrived one day with ice cream that would not keep because of the loss of power and handed them out to the people.

Lower down the river at Casino the Irving bridge was washed away. An airforce plane came to Casino to transport people stranded owing to the railway washaways. The devastation further down in Lismore, Woodburn and Coraki was much worse and would take pages to describe. However, several army ducks were brought into Lismore and the lower river to help in resue work and delivering goods to people and fodder to the stock.

In the surveying of the railway line north of Kyogle in about 1926 the surveyors took no notice of the local knowledge. When the surveyors were about four miles north of Kyogle where the lagoon is at Greenwood they were told by a resident to make provision for aquaducts so that the flood waters would get away. This local resident had seen the way the flood waters went in 1890 or the later flood of (I think) 1894. His local knowledge was completely ignored and therefore the railway line in 1954 was stood up like a paling fence.

Back to the flat area of Kyogle where the residents made use of local knowledge that they had gained from previous floods. Nearly all the houses on the flat had been built only one, two or three feet above ground level. With their new knowledge most of the residents had their houses raised above the known flood height, knowing that they would not have the hardships and loss that occurred in 1954.