A lifetime of memories along The Hawkesbury

Not even a flood or two, or three, is enough to keep one Hawkesbury woman down.

Pam Roper has lived in the Hawkesbury area her whole life and has seen a thing or two in her time.

She remembers her first two floods vividly, even though they occurred when she was just 8 and 10 years of age respectively.

“I remember the house floated away and ended up in the paddock,” Mrs Roper said.

“That was when we lived in Pitt Town Bottoms.

“The house is still there but it is scheduled to be demolished.” Born in Windsor, Mrs Roper was one of five children.

“I remember we all slept on one mattress under army blankets,” Mrs Roper said. “I don’t remember feeling frightened at all.

“My father worked on the flood boats, and I remember he would take us in the flood boats down and drop us off at Dr Skinners and we walked to school from there.” Mrs Roper recalls playing with pipes in the mud and she said she doesn’t remember being afraid at all.

“We lived right on the river,” she said.

“Dad always said if his kids were going to live on the river they were going to learn how to swim.

“He would take us out on the flood boat and tell us to swim back to shore.”

Mrs Roper said that the devastation brought about by the floods was sad and there was plenty of work to be done to clean it up, but it had to be done. She knows a little something about sadness, too, with a number of her family passing on early in life. “Life is short,” Mrs Roper said.

“I tell myself, “Don’t stay home. Get out there and enjoy yourself with friends.”

• Topics:

• Floods
• People
• Community