Some 4,000 properties and 200 businesses lie in the path of the water, as do Aboriginal burial grounds. The earth is saturated, and the water has nowhere to go
An enormous levee runs down Mannum’s main street. As the flood waters pour into South Australia from the eastern states, the river side of the town will be sacrificed. The other side, it is hoped, will be saved by the “great wall of Mannum”.
The water has come a long way, over many months, on rivers that flow from more than 1,500km north across the Queensland border, and from almost 1,000km east in the Snowy Mountains on the border of New South Wales and Victoria.
