00:02While the mighty Gascoigne River brings life to Carnarvon, it occasionally brings destruction.
00:08Growers estimate at least $25 million worth of crops were destroyed by wind and flooding
00:14caused by Cyclone Norell.
00:16Everybody's got a lot of work to try and get back what we, and recover from what's
00:23occurred.
00:24Yang Transplantation was one of the hardest hit.
00:27She lost about $50,000 worth of freshly planted seedlings and was left with a lake covering
00:34half of her crops.
00:35It wasn't just the crops that we lost.
00:37We had to replace all the plastics and stuff that we put down too, plus our ground has
00:41been damaged a lot.
00:42Growers say the inundation was aggravated by flood mitigation levies built by the state
00:48government in the wake of the 2010 floods.
00:51And it wasn't a flood.
00:52It should have only been a river.
00:53But 6.1 metres historically shouldn't affect any of the plantations.
00:57WA Minister for Agriculture Jackie Jarvis says the levies performed in line with the modelling,
01:03but she acknowledges some plantations had more flooding than others.
01:07She says the government will continue to assess the impact and work directly with landholders
01:11on the recovery.
01:12Growers left out of pocket want answers.
01:14I've been here for 40 years and our farm hasn't moved.
01:17If you look at Google Maps it's on the same bit of land it's always been.
01:21So some dynamic has impacted it and there's only one dynamic that they've put in and that's
01:26the levies.
01:27An intervention designed to protect livelihoods blamed for destroying them.
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