Above: Maryka is happy with her home now it’s been fixed after being waterlogged by water last year.
By Melissa Meehan
TWELVE months ago, visitors would have to scale a mountain of wet carpet to get to Maryka Collins’s front door, only to find the inside of her Tynong house watermarked and ruined by floodwater.
And almost a year later, Maryka was faced with the same wave of emotions.
“There was a day in January this year, we had really heavy rain and we had water all over my front yard again,” Maryka said.
“It was one brick away from coming into my house – I was petrified.”
Now, Maryka and her husband Tim’s house is a world away from the drenched carpet and waterlogged furniture that they were faced with after the 2011 floods.
The walls are a crisp white and there is freshly laid carpet where bare wet boards once lay.
But while the watermarks and ruined furniture are gone, the fears and worries remain.
Luckily for Maryka there was no flooding in Tynong on Sunday despite heavy rains, the drains that she believed added to last year’s floods had been cleared and she was safe.
“After the floods in February they cleared the drains but nothing was done before this January, that’s why the water came so close again,” she said.
“But they have cleared them since and the rains on the weekend were fine.”
Now she and her husband are making sure it won’t happen again by putting up fences that will hopefully stop the water from coming in again.
