 When we first heard we'd won Agtown up at Mt Barker we were very ecstatic about what was going on. It's been for them a really long journey since then however. Within a few days it started to dawn on us and the community was going to have this really big challenge. The news comes through that mytle on reclaimed areas has become flooded. We had an idea when it would arrive at mypo and Wolf Flat tour. Unfortunately it did eventually get here and when it came it burst the banks that generally hold the water on the side of the river and allowed the inundation of the reclaimed swamps which is perfect pasture land for us. The dairy farming, beef farming community on the pastures were the most affected. There was other people including horses and others that were affected to some extent and had to relocate their stock. The water basically made it to the what we call the bottom road along all the districts and sometimes even went over that. Farmers have been dairy farmers still or had a lot of stock on the flood play starting to look at where they were going to stick those animals during the flooding. Some farmers sold their animals some others found adjustment for them and people such as Buffalo Dairy Farm found another property to run his operations on. So 100% of our farm has been underwater since or basically after Boxing Day night when the bank broke. Yeah the next day the water came across and yeah currently 50% of the farm is probably still underwater and we're in the process of dewatering. It's not just the flood that comes on through and goes it hangs around and we need to pump it back into the river. The community has been amazing from people just offering me paddocks to put groups of buffalo like Youngstock to another dairy farmer offered me to use his dairy and yeah just everyone willing sending a message to say if you need a hand. When school started in the beginning of 2023 there was a new setup done created to allow for the school track up traffic within the community within the Mike Longer Township community and just those sort of things everyone just went beyond beyond what you'd expect them to. I think whenever there's you know a terrible disaster and the floods are the most recent example we do get to see people really shines through with their community spirit it sounds a little bit like a cliche but it's absolutely accurate. Here at Mipo you could see how people have banded together how they're helping neighbours out of course the ag town of the year was announced well before the floods and that spirit was recognised even then in what people had done within this local area to be over to pull together to really promote their area to be innovative. I think they've had a fantastic bottom spirit and vibe you know as Ken do we'll fight this we'll work through this we'll make something work where we can they weren't giving up they weren't going to say no our business must fall over their spirit was we need to continue because this floods only for a short period of time. Very slow a very long recovery but yeah it's it's coming back and we're getting eager to get back on and to start receding paddocks it's great to be back in back here with everyone from the community again to talk to everyone because we've all been pretty you know I've definitely been pretty busy the last four or five months keeping the business going. It's a lovely atmosphere inside there at the moment and people you know able to smile able to look not just at the past and particularly recent past and challenges but towards the future knowing that they've been through difficulties before and they're going to overcome this as well. Today is just the feel good event to forget about the flood for a bit and from today onwards I suppose we start living the crown of the Actown of the Year award.