Glamis Border Leicester stud principal Murray Brown was forced to airlift his stud stock to safety when flood water broke the levy banks at Bedgerabong, near Forbes, last year.
Nearly a year on from those dramatic scenes, Mr Brown is slowly but surely getting his operation back to the way it was before the flood.
Mr Brown has 290 Border Leicester stud breeders, runs a 670-first-cross ewe enterprise as well as 450 Angus cows on his 600-hectare property of which 100ha is irrigated.
Like any farm, he has a long list of tasks to be done, but the flood has extensively added to it.
"Just getting the irrigation up and running again has been a job," Mr Brown said.
"Three weeks ago we got that up and going.
"Post flood we had to complete maintenance and to repair damage. We've had the pump going and it is nearly back to normal life for the irrigation."
Mr Brown has some paddocks faring well while others have been hard work.
"We've still got to get some Lucerne established," he said.
"That's started well, so that's good.
"There are two paddocks that didn't get wet and there's still a few Lucerne plants there. That's the only place that didn't get wet from the floods."
Just getting the irrigated country ready for any cropping or pastures took a significant effort for Mr Brown.
"All of our irrigation country had water on it until the end of January when I was able to pump it off," he said.
"There was just such a big volume of it and it was trapped inside the levee banks.
The banks were doing what they're supposed to do but in reverse.
"We tried to siphon over levy banks for probably three weeks but then we had to pump for seven days.
"We used a 10 inch pump that we had going 24/7."
Once the water was displaced, the state of the ground was left in poor condition.
"It left it feeling like cement," Mr Brown said.
"We direct drilled some cereal in it just to feed.
"With the marginal weather against us and minimal sowing moisture it hasn't gone that well.
"Even though there is moisture down deep, the top just never really got wet enough to bridge the gap.
"It's just been chasing its tail all year.
"Some of the lighter country has been better, but the heavier country struggled where the flood had been."
Mr Brown said the hard crust left by the flood had made him change some of his farming practices this season.
"It was very hard and while I thought I couldn't plough everything, we did plough the dryland paddocks rather than direct drill," he said.
"This was mainly because it was so hard but also just trying to bust up some weeds that appeared from the flood."
He said that weed burden had been quite significant.
"We've got Lippia all the time and it's just a ground cover that is just prolific and takes over on years like last year," he said.
"All of our main low flood country that we haven't cultivated yet, it's covered in it.
So it's got to be ploughed as once it's established, it is not an option for chemical control.
"That's something on the list to do but there's enough to do before I look at that country.
"We thought let's try and get pasture established on the marginal flood country and inside the banks, supposedly the flood free country.
"We wanted to get back to established pasture there and establish some Lucerne.
"Then next year in another 12 months we can look at those other paddocks."
Mr Brown said determining what direction his operation would take was a balancing act.
"Wherever you've got livestock, you need country for them to stand on," he said.
"If we were keen, we could've sold all the stock and ploughed the whole farm and established pastures a lot quicker, but we have just got to stick to what we do.
"You try to compromise and make decisions that hopefully will work out.
"But I guess the biggest challenge this year is just a lack of moisture.
"We're thinking, wow, this is hard going, but then it is still going be better than last year when it was all underwater and we got nothing."
