All told, more than 20 separate floods have been responsible for the loss of life in the Maitland area. Flood deaths have occurred at or in the vicinity of Windermere, Hillsborough, Anambah, Aberglasslyn, Bolwarra, Maitland, Horseshoe Bend, Dagworth, South Maitland, Louth Park, East Maitland, Pitnacree, Raworth, Tocal, Phoenix Park, Brisbanefield and Devils Elbow (in the Millers Forest area).

The urban areas, including South Maitland, central Maitland, Horseshoe Bend and East Maitland, have seen about half these deaths. Louth Park, with six flood deaths since 1840, has been the hardest hit of the rural districts.

Over half of those who died were adult males. Women make up not much more than a tenth of the total and girls a similar proportion. About one death in five has been of a boy or adolescent male. Almost all of those who died were drowned, with a small number being electrocuted. All of the latter were in 1955.

A striking fact about flood deaths in the Maitland area is the great fall in their numbers since the beginning of the twentieth century. Between 1840 and 1900 there were at least 33 flood deaths, but since then there have been only seven apart from the 11 of the great flood of 1955. The change has a lot to do with the improved physical protection by way of levees and floodway bypasses, the development of flood warning systems and rescue capabilities, and fewer people living on the lowest and most deeply-flooded parts of the floodplains.

What has happened is that the degree of separation between community members and floods has increased. In turn, fewer people are forced into contact with floodwaters than used to be the case.

The rate of flood deaths has fallen dramatically throughout Australia. But in most years there is a flood death or two somewhere in the nation, usually because people enter floodwaters in vehicles. Often they do so on roads that have been barricaded to keep traffic from proceeding.

Floods also cause injury and illness. The injuries which people sustain in floods have been little researched in Australia, but it is known that flooding invariably causes ‘spikes’ in the numbers of people who attend the accident and emergency departments of hospitals. Cuts, abrasions, fractures and other injuries happen frequently in the dangerous environments which floods pose.

Large pieces of debris are a particularly severe hazard, and venomous snakes and spiders can be problematic as can infections of cuts. During the 1955 flood a total of five black and brown snakes were found in a single day in a Brisbanefield farmhouse. And as last year’s floodwaters fell, many snakes had to be caught and disposed of.

In the aftermath of flooding, people often suffer from skin ailments and diarrhoeal complaints caused by exposure to floodwaters containing sewage and chemicals. Many Maitland people must have experienced these flood-related discomforts, along with hypothermia which would have been a particular problem for anyone immersed for long periods in the many floods of the winter months.

Even in floodplain communities like Maitland, lives these days are lived with a greater degree of separation from floods than was the case in the distant past. But when that separation disappears, floods can quickly reassert their capacity to kill, injure and cause illness.