Scott Darcy and his neighbours are facing the very real possibility of losing crops and pastures to flooding for the second time in five years.
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In between, they have been hit by two years of brutal drought.
It's a shocking feeling, the otherwise fairly philosophical farmer told media and Premier Dominic Perrottet, who visited on Thursday with Deputy Premier Paul Toole and Minister for Emergency Services David Elliott.
The trio, with media, were to visit Mr Darcy's farm in NSW's Central West, but the water sprawling across the floodplain from the Lachlan River came up overnight, and so we met on the side of the road.
"We are just starting to see the start of the flood that's coming through Forbes, for the last three or four days we've been preparing," Mr Darcy said.
"Come Saturday or Sunday that's when we'll see the peak down here - I'm hoping it's not going to get anywhere near 2016 but we've got to take it that it's going to be.
"We've been moving stock, and checking banks, I've done as much as I can ... but it's a wait and see game."
The Lachlan River is expected to reach the major flood level at Jemalong Weir on Friday, and downstream on Saturday.
Rises to 7.8m at the Jemalong Weir Downstream gauge are possible.
With this flood behaving so differently to 2016 Mr Darcy can only hope he doesn't see a repeat of that year's devastating losses.
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"In 2016 we had a couple of breaches on levee banks, we were down to about 400 acres of 2500, we lost a few stock and fences, pastures - we lost a lot of money," he said.
"We had two years drought like everyone knows, it's been pretty hard for the last five.
"We were that close to making some really good money like everyone in the valley and it's going to cost a lot of people a lot of money."
He's hopeful his lucerne will come through the disaster; he's already feeding his sheep hay that he hadn't planned to use until the end of summer and having to re-sow and then wait for lucerne to re-establish if it remains inundated too long would be another blow.
Mr Perrottet, Mr Toole and Mr Elliot had flown over the Lachlan Thursday morning to see the extent of the spread of the floodwater; and the question on every journalist's lips was, "what about the raising of the Wyangala Dam wall?"
Mr Perrotet said the NSW Government was committed, but was also committed to due diligence.
What did Scott Darcy have to say?
"Just get in and get it done," he said.
"I know it must be a headache for (the government) to get it done but it's people's livelihoods ...
"I wouldn't have (the Premier's) job for quids, it'd be pretty hard ... there's some people that're not gonna be happy about the dam wall and for other people it's a necessity.
"Our population is getting bigger every year and we've got to feed them - we've got to feed Australia."
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