Kempsey mayor Kinne Ring recalls “carting fuel” five kilometres by foot to her parent’s house in the upper Macleay Valley in the aftermath of flooding in 2021.
Their rural home was cut off by floodwaters, relying on a generator for power.
“Residents of Toorumbee were actually cut off for a number of months from electricity and road access,” the mayor said.
“I also had, when I was young, two buses, a car trip and a canoe trip just to make sure I could get to school.”
The mayor shared her personal flood experiences at Tuesday’s Kempsey Shire Council meeting, during discussion of a study about flood risks in the upper Macleay Valley that predicted some rural roads could be under water for up to six days in the case of an extreme flood.
What is in it?: The new report contains analysis on the frequency of flooding, rainfall records and totals, historic flood events, future planning, and modelling for future events.
Importantly, it highlights which roads, bridges and other infrastructure are likely to be impacted by certain levels of flooding.
The lingo: The report categorises flood severity by Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP), which is the probability of a flood event being equalled or exceeded within a year.
A one percent AEP event has a one percent chance of being equalled or exceeded in any year.
Road inundation: The report states that if a one percent AEP event was to hit the Upper Macleay, Hickey’s Creek Road - in the rural reaches of the Kempsey LGA - could be inundated by water for up to 147.5 hours.
This is more than six days.
What’s it mean?: For the purposes of the report, “inundation” is defined as more than one centimetre of water on the road.
According to the modelling, Mungay Creek Road and Mines Road could both be under water for more than 130 hours.
For Upper Macleay locals, this could mean lost wages, days without supplies, and restricted access for emergency services.
Roads could be closed long after the inundation clears however, as damage is assessed.
Tough read: Councillor Julie Coburn called the modelling “quite confronting”.
“It's quite significant isolation for some of those communities. This immediately raises questions about community isolation, emergency access, and our infrastructure,” she said.
Are we on the right track?: The report’s findings prompted Coburn to question whether council should adjust focus from “continuously repairing vulnerable infrastructure” to investing in resilience projects.
“That might mean raising or strengthening a bridge, improving a culvert, protecting an approach road, or addressing a slip, or looking at another engineering solution.”
Listen to the community: The report will now be placed on public exhibition, with Coburn urging residents to have their say, and for council to listen.
“Our ‘Up River’ residents have lived experience. They know which bridge goes under first. They know which road actually remains closed and for how many days,” she said.
Request for funding: At the same meeting, councillors agreed to write to Cowper MP Pat Conaghan, and relevant Labor ministers, seeking funding to upgrade flood gauge infrastructure throughout the Macleay River catchment.
Councillor Arthur Bain told the meeting that a gauge on Nulla Nulla Creek has “never worked”, despite having “been there for many years”.
Another councillor, Ben Paix, said accurate and timely flood information “saves lives, protects property and gives community, emergency services and farmers time to act”.
The new normal: According to the SES, there have been 23 ”major floods" along the Macleay River since 1893, including two events in 2022 and one in 2025.
In 2025, the Kempsey CBD and West Kempsey were inundated by almost two metres of water. Businesses were forced to close indefinitely due to the damage.
After the waters subside: Frederickton’s Darren Morn has assisted with the clean-up of many floods over the years, usually picking up rubbish and debris in a backhoe for the council.
“I started with the council in ‘85. There weren't too many floods before 2001, but after that, they came pretty regularly,” Morn told the Mid North Coaster.
Morn remembers well the three floods which struck the region in quick succession in 2009, 2011 and 2013, but said the worst he has seen came in 2001.
“We cleaned up everywhere. It went a lot further than normal up into the CBD. We had our backhoes going around, cleaning up everyone’s gear they had thrown out onto their front yards.”