So often the images we see from flooded townships are residents dealing with ruined household goods and families trying to find new places to call home. Another part of this story is the devastation that floods bring for small business, especially long-standing family businesses that have been part of the fabric of the town for decades.
These impacts were deeply felt when the 2017 floods hit South Murwillumbah. The water did not come from the Tweed River. It came up through the cane fields at the bottom of Buchanan Street. For the businesses that lined the industrial precinct, it was a flood they had not seen before, and damage they had not prepared for. For some, it felt unsurvivable.
Five years later, the 2022 floods came again. Deeper this time. At Hayes Steel, 430mm higher than 2017. At the Williams Group truss plant, 2.4 metres of water. At Council’s Buchanan Street depot, 1.8 metres, with fuel tanks contaminated and vehicles lost.
The question that followed was not just how to rebuild, but where.
Industry Central, on flood-free land above the South Murwillumbah industrial area, is the answer the Tweed chose. An unprecedented land swap, the first of its kind in Australia, has moved 5 businesses and Council’s entire works depot to higher ground, repaid more than $11 million to the NSW Government, and effectively paid for itself. This is the final chapter in the Facing the River series, and the one that answers what the whole series has been building toward: what does it look like when a community doesn’t just rebuild, but chooses a fundamentally different future?
When the next flood warning goes out across the Tweed, Council’s depot will be dry, its fleet ready, and its people focused on the community.
That is what this series has always been about. Not the buildings. The people inside them.
Seven weeks, 7 chapters, one community. The Tweed didn’t just rebuild. It chose a different future.
“This project demonstrates what deliberate and strategic thinking looks like in practice. We identified a problem, we found an unconventional solution, and we committed to it through COVID, through the 2022 floods, through inflation and through a development process that took years. The result is a precinct that gives Murwillumbah businesses a future, a depot that will serve this community in its next emergency, and a financial outcome that required nothing from ratepayers. We can serve our community better tomorrow than we can today.”
Troy Green, General Manager, Tweed Shire Council
