'Constant reminders' as Eugowra's Cross family share their story

For the people living there, visual reminders are both daily and tangible. Married couple, Sue and George Cross, recently found their crockpots in the back paddock. Their satellite dish, some streets away from their home.

Other belongings weren't recovered or salvageable, or carry a "still missing" tag to this day.

"There's a lot of stuff we haven't gotten back and there's constant reminders around us, you can't get away from it," Sue Cross said.

"And you just think 'it really did happen'."

Two days after raging flood water engulfed the town, the Cross pair had their picture taken in front of a house that'd been swept off its foundation.

If not for a gum tree halting the floating home in its tracks, it could have claimed the life of George's mother, Mavis Cross, and four others.

Meeting with the Central Western Daily on Tuesday, George's wife fought back tears as she relived the moment.

"He still can't talk about it," she said.

"Georgy keeps seeing his mum disappear in the water because he thought he'd lost her a couple of times that day, [Mavis] can't swim. The water kept taking his feet from under him when he was trying to get her out. He's very traumatised by it."

Knowing it's been exactly half-a-year since that devastation brings a mixed bag of emotions. It's a surreal timeline that seems to have no end or beginning.

A gut-wrenching fact that there were two fatalities from that day, many remain baffled at how that figure didn't result in even more lives lost.

"I do not know how the death toll wasn't higher, it was mayhem and every man for himself, really," Mrs Cross said.

"People managed to scramble into their roof cavities or up trees, there were so many of them. From standard flood alarms at 4.30am, to be wiped off the map by 9am you just couldn't fathom it.

"[And that house], it would've went right over the top of them. There would've been five dead in one go if it weren't for getting caught on that tree."

Meeting on Aurora Street in May, Sue and Mavis Cross stood side-by-side where the house, now removed, was once wedged.

Floating 200 metres down the road, being there together stirred talk of what could've ended very differently.

"Can you believe it, mum?," Sue said turning to Mavis, the pair falling silent in front of the day-saving gum tree.

"No, no I can't," Mavis said, "I didn't even know [the house] was coming for us."

Mavis' fibro-walled home on the corner of Evelyn and Aurora streets has slowly been getting back to liveable status.

Busy on Tuesday in her newly-built kitchen, she returned to finish baking hundreds of slices for the ECCC High Tea event - a fundraising drive to help rebuild Eugowra Community Children's Centre.

For Sue and George, they continue plodding along between their shed home renovations and replacement caravan.

"We hear rumbling up the back lane when the big cranes bring in pod homes to put around all of the houses, progress is slowly being made," she said.

"We have our community days where we clean up the town, fix up the gardens and redo our own shed, it's a miracle there wasn't any major damage to the frame.

"Things are very slow and steady and it's put us back a bit, but we're alive and still going. It's just one day at a time for everyone here."

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