River Murray Recovery Stories
Graham Radford · 56 min
A fifth-generation farmer turned Murray River resident, Graham Radford lost a metre of water through his historic cottage and emerged demanding something the system never delivered: a documented plan so the next flood doesn't catch anyone unprepared.
Graham Radford's family has worked the land for five generations. After decades fighting drought on sheep stations and farms inland, he and his wife moved to the River Murray in 2010, drawn by the water and its beauty. They built a life there: a bed-and-breakfast in a 130-year-old cottage, a tourism business running horse tours that brought 1,500 visitors a year through the bush. Then the 2022 floods came. A metre of water filled the cottage. Crops he'd planted were destroyed. What should have brought nutrients to the soil instead brought salt that killed everything growing.
But the flood's worst damage was different. Graham spent weeks preparing his cottage with family and engineers, calling politicians and radio stations, desperate to find any documented guidance on protecting a historic stone building from floodwater. Nobody had answers. When emergency responders finally came, they offered him three sandbags. He ended up filling 2,200. What saved the cottage wasn't the sandbags at all. It was plastic membrane, wrapped in layers by his engineer nephew, protecting the mortar from the current's force. Simple. Undocumented. Learned only through trial.
Now Graham is asking something the system has never delivered: a written manual. He wants the community to document what happened in 2022, what worked, what failed, what people should do next time. The knowledge from the 1956 flood was lost. He won't let it happen again. Two years later, nobody has started this work. Graham believes it is the most important thing that could be done for the next flood, whenever it comes.
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