North west floods: Generous giving supports Cook family

And if you want to hear a story of courage and conviction, these same people are the ones who will put tears in your eyes and leave you inspired.

The devastation the couple based at Channel Downs, just south of Nelia, experienced when February's floodwaters swept across their flat land, and the help they're receiving to rebuild is nothing short of breathtaking.

Read more: Rewired - NQ refencing appeal launched

It all started at the end of January when Kylie was away putting their two oldest daughters, Natalie and Rachel, into school at The Cathedral College in Townsville.

She remembers how serious the flooding was in that city and how she was feeling about her parents and the girls at school, and how conversations with Ron back at home were so reassuring.

"He'd said to me, 'it's really good the way it's falling, sun shining in the morning, doing the perfect wet weather thing', and then it all just went downhill from there," she said.

"Day four came and Ronald goes, 'It needs to stop now'. That's a big call from him - we'd had 16.5 inches in four days.

"He'd gone for a very quick fly and could see some cattle on high ground. He said, 'there's not a lot of high ground'.

"Then when that second wave came through, that big rain that the catchment had got up at Richmond, it all just came down to us. The end."

Related: We're on our knees

Kylie had had her car packed for days and was itching to get home to her husband, who had been home alone through the whole ordeal, with his leg in a brace from a knee reconstruction operation.

"I just needed to get home to Ronald. He'd been here through all this on his own, and I needed to see what was happening," she said.

Despite the state of his knee, he'd lifted freezers up from the downstairs area with the help of a tractor, and continually fed the pair's horses in knee-deep water.

Richmond's David and Patsy Fox had Kylie on their jobs board and flew her and their two younger children, Emily and Peter, home as soon as they arrived in town.

"I landed and Ron was like, 'Let's get our gear away, we've got sick horses'," Kylie said. "I honestly thought I was going to get here and burst into tears and be a mess but there wasn't time."

That's when their lives changed again - the new normal, Kylie calls it - when she shared their story with the world and it responded.

All but 10 of their 350 cattle perished and every fence and strainer post on the property was washed away.

"It feels like it's happened ages ago now," Ron said. "It's not as if it never happened, there's plenty of stuff to let you know it happened, but it feels like it's ages ago.

"We put up just over 30km of new fence and stood up everything else."

People they hadn't heard from in years were there within days, offering their help.

One of them was Prosperpine's Brett Stagg. Ron said their families had know each other for years when he used to work in the Richmond and Hughenden areas.

"He just rang up and said, get it all ready and we'll come out and smash some fence up."

Another man, Andrew Poots, an accountant from Mackay they'd never met, got in touch via the Rewired project, called up three young miners and came out.

"One of the young fellows did the water crossings for me. I was very thankful," Kylie said.

Plenty of mates were there to help as well. One of them, Adrian from Julia Creek, rang Ron four times a day while the flood was on and as soon as he could get through, was out to service all the vehicles that had had water through them.

As well as three lots of Blazeaid volunteers, another mate, Tony Pratt put his hand up for fencing.

Ron praised his fencing ability but Kylie said he'd been good for Ron, giving him someone he could talk with over a beer at the end of the day. At the height of the help, Kylie was cooking for 12 people.

The reason Ron refused offers of evacuation at the height of the flooding was their Romlie Stock Horse Stud, horses they were intimately connected with.

"He kept saying, well I can save the horses, I'm not going anywhere," Kylie recalled.

The stallions had to be in the yard beside the house and Ron said they did it the toughest, standing for three days with water up past their fetlocks.

The others retreated to the loading ramp beside the house and stood there in the wind and rain as the water rose an inch at hour towards them.

Ron was feeding them from a big tub he'd walk out through the floodwaters, negotiating hidden obstacles underwater along the way.

He said they all survived, losing a bit of hair and having their legs swell up, but he had a scary moment after their first feed when the water receded.

When they all lay down he thought the feed had gone off and he'd poisoned them.

"They were all sound asleep and they slept for half a day, on their sides," he explained.

"If someone had flown over they would have thought they were dead too, with all the cattle around. They were just sore from standing."

The story doesn't end there. Another mate, Gordon Batt, based at Levuka near Cloncurry, was in constant contact.

Ron told him one day that his horses, busy chasing green pick and walking further every day, were worrying him, without the protection of fences.

"He asked what the road was like and how close he could get to the house.

"He said, I'll be down Friday. You walk the horses out to the turnoff and I'll bring them home.

"He loaded up nine horses and took them back to his place. They were there for six weeks, and they came back, fat as.

"And he couldn't come the short way - he had to go up to Cloncurry and around.

"He said, that'll take a bit of weight off your mind."

And then there's the cattle. Ron and Kylie were looking at branding 150 calves before they were washed away.

The response to a phone call Kylie made to Adrian Hollingsworth at Re-stocking the North West, hoping to secure some agistment cattle, took her breath away.

Bob and Raye O'Sullivan from Doongmabulla, Clermont, donated 150 ready-to-join heifers.

Together with six Droughtmaster bulls sourced from Derick, Pam, Nicole and Jason Spann, Minlacowie and Wingfield Droughtmasters, Jambin; Doug Miles, Trafalgar, Morinish; Douglas Birch, Birch Stud, Eidsvold; Keith Rutherford, Redskin Droughtmasters, Morinish, and Brian and Yvonne Heck, Bryvonlea, Glastonbury Creek; they are back in business.

"I would have taken the dregs. Beggars are not choosers."

While they still won't brand a calf this year, the support from people such as this has been truly sustaining.

Related: Rebuilding Julia Creek's Channel Downs

They include letters from around Australia, one with a Lotto ticket from Hay, NSW.

"Just to know people have your back," Kylie said, expressing what it meant to receive them.

"If it weren't for Stan and Marilyn Johnson and Shane and Kim, from Kenilworth Steel Supplies - that was just huge, what they did for us, plus what the Re-stocking the North West is doing.

"That Stan Johnson is an amazing man. I finally got to meet him when I took the girls back to school and give him the hug he deserved."

Ron said the next two years would be the telling point in their slow climb back but too much had been given in help for them not to keep going.

"Some bloke you never even know of, you get a number and a message that he wants you to ring.

"So you ring him and start having a yarn, and at the end of it, he says I've got six decks of heifers for you. It's pretty overwhelming."

There are plenty of challenges ahead for the Cooks - normally if they'd had 29 inches without a flood, all their waterholes would be full to the brim, but instead they've all been scoured out by the force of the water.

In contrast, other creeks have totally silted up with metres of mud and are no longer a creek bed, meaning the Cooks have to grade new tracks.

Prickly acacia is also flowering profusely but Ron said they'd live with that.

"We have before, we will again. A lot of prickle bush died through that dry but there's a lot of rellies turning up."

Kylie added that flooding in 2009 had put a lot of prickle bush in open areas it hadn't been in before.

They are all challenges they and many others will face in the years ahead.

Queensland Country Life has documented this story and plenty of others in our souvenir edition available on Thursday, May 30.

Be sure to pick up your copy to commemorate this monumental event in our state's history.