Huntly residents have once again been counting the cost of their low-lying location, with at least a handful of people left mopping up after water got into houses.
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Many more residents have suffered building damage and distress as flash flooding filled yards and entered outside buildings following downpours on January 7-8.
A rising tide of anger about what many see as inadequate infrastructure and council action has lead to more than 200 people signing up to a new Facebook group to share help and advice and organise to press for change.
The City of Greater Bendigo has said that is liaising directly with affected residents.
The council's acting director of asset management Brooke Pearce also told the Advertiser that land across the municipality covered by a "subject to inundation overlay" needed to be developed with a view to withstanding risks such as potential flooding.
Debbie Dean was struggling to make headway clearing up her Gungurru Road property on Monday morning.
"It's horrendous," she said. "Silt filled our drains and blocked all of our drainage system. There's sludge on the [garage] floor like glue.
"We've got thousands of dollars worth of damage from the water getting into the house even though I tried everything to keep it out."
According to Ms Dean, when she moved to Gungurru Road seven years ago she was informed that it wasn't in a flood zone.
"Six floods later and many calls to council [have fallen] on deaf ears," she said.
More stormwater drains needed
She believed the construction of a nearby housing development had meant "water that would normally sit in paddocks [has] filled our waterways," while stormwater catchments had been left "the same as they were when Huntly was founded".
"They are bricked pits that have eroded, and bricks fall into already useless pipes and block them," she said.
When the extreme weather events hit this year, on Tuesday, January 2 and Sunday, January 7, the water flowed downwards across the road, taking the top off some council-built levee banks, and rushed down the Deans' driveway and front stairs towards the house, which is below street level.
Paul Dean's "man cave" was flooded, and so too was the couple's sunken bedroom.
Ms Dean spent hours sweeping water out of the room to stop it spilling into other zones of the house.
On Monday it was still splashing up off the carpet, and furnishings and belongings in the room, including a mound of clothes piled on the bed, were ruined due to their severe drenching, she said.
Behind the house a swimming pool had turned chocolate brown.
"We call it the Augustus Gloop pool, from Willy Wonka, because it's ruined," she said.
Three cars were also "wrecked" from hail damage.
"I'm very strong but I'm about this far from breaking," Ms Dean said, holding up her thumb and first finger a tiny distance apart.
Nevertheless, others were in a worse situation, she said.
Frequency of flooding 'definitely getting worse'
Further down the road, wheelchair-bound Rosemary Smith was also clearing mud from her drains.
"The family came around early this morning and shovelled and hosed," she said.
"Without them I'd be in trouble.
"I can only come out once [the conditions] start to ease a bit. I don't want to get bogged or washed away."
The decades-long Gungurru Road resident said Sunday night's flooding was the fifth time water from the street had entered her home.
The frequency and extent was "definitely getting worse," she believed.
"But then so is the weather."
Ms Smith agreed that drainage infrastructure in the area hadn't been expanded to keep up with population growth.
An overflowing dam on a nearby private property didn't help the situation.
"Whereas 20-odd years ago there might've been 12 of us in the area, now there are around 200 of us," she said.
"You can't keep connecting people to a single pipeline, and not build the infrastructure."
Residents were told by the council to keep their drainage channels clean, she said.
"There's no point in telling me to clean my pipes. I'd have the cleanest pipes on the street but the first time it rains all the leaves and debris from everyone else washes down to my pipe.
"I don't know what the answer is but surely all the [wise] heads can come up with something.
"They can't stop the weather but there has to be something they can do in this day and age with all their technology."
'Out the back looks like a river'
On the Midland Highway at Huntly, just around the bend from Trickey's Diesel Service, Cathy Seiler and Craig Wicks' place was one of several with water still pooled deep in the yard at lunch time on Monday.
At another house nearby a woman was wading through her front garden while her son floated around on a double mattress.
Ms Seiler said while there was water left in their front yard, the back yard and sheds were full of it.
"Out the back looks like a river," she said.
"It's Lake Huntly out there."
"We've lost a few power tools and things like that," Mr Wicks said.
"But I'm just glad it's not in the house."
The couple also believed a nearby new housing estate was responsible for worsening drainage in the area.
"We're luckier than most," Ms Seiler said. "But it could've been prevented."
