{"id":845869,"date":"2026-09-13T02:10:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T02:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845869\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T02:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T02:10:17","slug":"riverland-residents-reflect-on-1956-the-year-of-south-australias-largest-flood-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845869\/","title":{"rendered":"Riverland residents reflect on 1956, the year of South Australia’s largest flood event"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Peterson was in his first year of university when floodwaters hit his South Australian hometown of Kingston on Murray in 1956.<\/p>\n

Juggling a geochemistry degree, the then-18-year-old would head home sporadically to roll up his sleeves and fill sandbags and tip trucks with dirt.<\/p>\n

“My father had been in Kingston on Murray since 1896, and hadn’t seen anything like it,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

At 88, John Peterson still remembers the amount of water that washed through the Riverland. (ABC Riverland: Amelia Walters)<\/p>\n

“It was amazing how high the water was. I think it was around 300,000 megalitres a day, which normally, if we got 10,000, we’d think we had a good flow.<\/p>\n

“A number of houses were destroyed or damaged \u2026 including the local garage, shop and bank.”<\/p>\n

Mr Peterson said the inconsistent predictions of water level height and timing meant conditions changed daily.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Floodwaters peaked at about 9.1 metres in Renmark in August 1956, according to the Renmark Irrigation Trust.\u00a0 (Supplied: John Peterson)<\/p>\n

“Working bees were held every day, people supplied morning and afternoon tea for the work gangs on the banks,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Tip trucks made a difference. Without them the flood would have beaten us, I think.<\/p>\n

“Almost all the locals were helping in some form.”<\/p>\n

When his hands were not covered in dirt, Mr Peterson recorded the chaos on his Eumig C3 8mm camera.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

“My parents had given me the camera for my birthday the year before, and I used to shoot anything,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I had started [filming the flood] with black and white \u2026 but because it was so dramatic, I filmed in colour.”\"man<\/p>\n

John Peterson still has the same camera today. (ABC Riverland: Amelia Walters)<\/p>\n

While 70 years have passed since South Australia’s worst flooding event on record, many people like Mr Peterson, 88, still remember it like it was yesterday.<\/p>\n

Picking oranges from rowboats<\/p>\n

Theo Kaesler’s family has lived at their Loxton property for more than five generations.<\/p>\n

The now 78-year-old was just eight when the 1956 floodwater encroached on his property.<\/p>\n

\"man<\/p>\n

The blacksmith shed that was used during the 1956 flood is still standing on Theo Kaesler’s property today. (ABC Riverland: Amelia Walters)<\/p>\n

While his family’s home was unaffected, he vividly remembers picking oranges off his neighbour’s tree via a rowboat.<\/p>\n

“My neighbour said to my dad, ‘Watch out, there might be snakes in the tree,’ and [I] nearly jumped over the edge,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"citrus<\/p>\n

Many farmers had to harvest their citrus trees by boat due to the high floodwaters. (Supplied: John Peterson)<\/p>\n

\"man<\/p>\n

Theo Kaesler’s 100-year-old citrus trees are still standing today. (ABC Riverland: Amelia Walters)<\/p>\n

“The water was like an ocean wave, and you could hear the riverbank collapsing sometimes.”<\/p>\n

Remnants of the 1956 flood still exist on Mr Kaesler’s property, including a gum tree that was photographed during the peak.<\/p>\n

\"The\"Tree Tree at flood level in 1956. \/ The same tree in 2026.<\/p>\n

“It’s a real landmark. A lot of the other trees got lost to fires over the years,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We take people to the tree \u2026 show them where the flood levels were, and they say, ‘Oh, that can’t be right.'”Lessons learnt 70 years on<\/p>\n

Months of heavy rainfall in the eastern states resulted in disastrous amounts of water travelling through the Lower Murray-Darling Basin.<\/p>\n

The Sunraisia Daily Newspaper reported in 1957 that Australia’s total damage costs exceeded 5 million pounds, or more than $204 million today, according to the minister for national development in 1957.<\/p>\n

Local historian Meredith Arnold has dedicated her life to preserving the past.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Meredith Arnold was 16 during the flood. (ABC Riverland: Jackson Byrne)<\/p>\n

She said researchers gathered findings from the flood at the time and sent them to a university in Switzerland for analysis.<\/p>\n

“They did work on sunspotting to tell them when the next big flood would come, and the results that came back eventually were the late 2030s, so you’re looking at 10 years time \u2026 somewhere around then.”<\/p>\n

Ms Arnold said the biggest takeaways from that period were how the community supported one another.<\/p>\n

“Quite a few men had come back from the war 10 years before, so they were accustomed to giving orders and taking orders,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"two<\/p>\n

John Peterson says the men used 85-kilogram manure bags to protect homes. (Supplied: John Peterson)<\/p>\n

“That was, I think, a really big help in 56 that those men were there to lead the groups.”<\/p>\n

Back in his garden tending to his plants, Mr Peterson shared Ms Arnold’s belief that it brought out the kindness of the Riverland people.<\/p>\n

\"man<\/p>\n

John Peterson wants the community to always stick together. (ABC Riverland: Amelia Walters)<\/p>\n

He hopes it is something future generations will carry through.<\/p>\n

“No matter in good times or bad or whether it’s a flood or another disaster, we all need to work together,” he said.<\/p>\n

“A smile works wonders with people, and just words of encouragement or a slap on the back can lift someone’s spirits.”<\/p>\n

More news from regional SA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Peterson was in his first year of university when floodwaters hit his South Australian hometown of Kingston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[357901,192,24483,2020,85713,357907,357908,76343,357903,357904,357905,357906,357902,79,357909,357910],"class_list":["post-845869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-1956-flood","tag-environment","tag-flood","tag-historic","tag-historic-flood","tag-john-peterson","tag-meredith-arnold","tag-murray-river","tag-renmark-flood","tag-renmark-irrigation-trust","tag-river-murray","tag-river-murray-flood","tag-riverland-flood","tag-science","tag-theo-kaesler","tag-when-was-sas-biggest-flood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}