We know this area has always flooded. In the 1800s the Widjabul Wia-bal people warned settlers not to build their town on a flood plain, but the dairy farming community needed access to the river for transport. Back then, the floods were few and far between. Locals would talk in hushed tones of the '54 and '74 floods, decades ago.

All that has changed now.

In the last five years, we have had two devastating floods. The flood we are experiencing now is a full two metres higher than previous records. The damage to farms and our community will be incalculable. And we know that climate change is causing more volatile and worsening flood conditions.

With the one degree of warming we have experienced already, the atmosphere carries more water. As many have said, the rain over the last few days was like a river in the sky.

Farmers are resilient and adaptable but the shock of seeing the leaves of our fruit trees and vegetables literally shrivel in the extreme heat in 2019 was devastating. We used to grow coffee, stone fruit and macadamias, but the risk of trying to grow crops in more frequent droughts and temperatures rising still further, made us decide to just raise cattle. We have implemented regenerative farming practices and have done all we can to adapt, but we have been let down by governments who have refused to do what it takes to cut the carbon emissions fuelling climate change.

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As we watch the waters rise, our fury grows. Not only have our governments refused to curb carbon emissions from existing fossil fuel projects, but they are actively approving and funding new projects.

They are trashing our future for the profits of wealthy fossil fuel corporations and offering us nothing but platitudes as our lives are literally washed away.

Farmers have heeded the advice from scientists and prepared for droughts, heatwaves, floods and fires to be more intense and more frequent. We have warned governments and lobbied for effective mitigation, but we've been ignored. It's not enough for governments to set up "resilience funds" to support us after these disasters happen. We need rapid, accelerated and deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to slow the prevalence of these disasters before they happen.

We have been farming in this region for almost 50 years. We know the seasons and the cycles of climate. Any city slicker who says this is normal has not farmed for generations on our land. What we are seeing now is not normal. During the black summer we fought fires in sub-tropical rainforests that "don't burn". Now we are seeing so-called "one in 1000 year" flood events back-to-back.

Of course we fear for the future, for our children and grandchildren, but that blurs the reality that climate change is not just a threat to the future. It is a catastrophe we are living through right now.