When you meet Eugowra's Daniel "Danny" Townsend you'll invariably find a positive outlook on life.
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But what's less obvious, and talked about with only a few, is he's still reeling over the tragic death of his older sister, Diane Smith.
For the Eugowra Newsagency & Supermarket owner, there isn't a day that goes by where Mr Townsend doesn't mentally wade through the devastating events that unfolded during the November 14 floods.
A wave of flood water, described as an "inland tsunami", engulfed the small town - the place where his relatives have lived for the past six generations.
Standing at what's now a memorial site, where police recovered Diane Smith's body, Mr Townsend recounts the agonising reality he's endured without his sister.
"We went out looking, our whole family, but we just couldn't find her. We even walked right past here," he said.
"My mother doesn't come around here, she just won't. We've tried, I've brought her here once, but she just won't."
"We actually found her phone, there's a house just up here on the left being demolished, and it was on his kitchen bench. It doesn't work, you know, but it's just something of Diane's.
"She was so close, but that far away."
'She just couldn't hold on'
At the time of the flooding, Mr Townsend lived at the rear of his store. It is now ridden with debris, still. Looking back at the morning of the floods, he says water was rapidly climbing the walls of the space.
At the time, he noticed Ms Smith at her house on North Street across the road with her eldest son, Christopher.
Seeing his sister loaded onto a firetruck, he thought 'oh okay, she's 'right, she's safe', but he later found out she'd been directing people to safety thereafter, saying "go this way, go that way".
Mr Townsend says she then got into a resident's ute; her son in another car behind.
They were both heading to higher ground along Pye Street when a wall of water emerged at speed.
"There was a lot of canola in that paddock and when the water hit, the canola was balling, like rolling and balling, and she went to go around one onto the right-hand side of the road, but the water got underneath the car," he said.
"It just took her across the gully ... that's when she rang her friend up and ... I've got to stop for a minute ... but when she got out, she just couldn't hold on.
"She was going to hold on to the tree ... but it washed her straight from Pye [Street] ... when she got caught, her son was going to go in after her ... but they held him back.
"But someone asked for help and she helped. I'd do it [help], you would do it, she did it. Unfortunately, it was her time and it happened."
'People need to know'
Roughly 455 metres is the distance from the grass trench between Pye and Evelyn streets, to the memorial site beyond Parkes Street where Ms Swith was later found.
Imagining his sister's course of events in her last moments is traumatic and gutting for Mr Townsend to visualise.
But he says talking about the family's painstaking loss has ironic benefits.
Still an emotionally gruelling burden to bear, he's gradually "getting better" at what continues to internally rock him - nearly 12 months on.
"That's what happened to Diane ... wrong spot, wrong time ... but I need to tell people, people need to know," he said.
"I still have trouble in the shop some days. [Visitors] came in once and said 'oh, did anyone lose their lives there?' and I just lost it.
"I had to say 'please, I don't want to go there'. But [talking] helps us process stuff, though, as much as we want to push it down."
Which is perhaps why Mr Townsend enjoyed talking more about some of his sister's favourite things, like family gatherings; and fun the five siblings had growing up.
He also talked about revelling in plenty of laughs - and the laughter he's more than confident they'd still otherwise be having today.
"If you needed her, she was there, that's what she was like," he said.
But it [talking] helps us process stuff, though, as much as we want to push it down.
- Younger brother, Daniel Townsend on struggling with the reality of his late sister, Diane Smith.
"At times, I just wish I could ask her 'now, where'd you put all of my books, Diane? Where did those flash drives go, or the keys to my shop?'
"If she was here, I would've told her about the bottles of alcohol that had floated inside the shop, too, because people ended up throwing them out and she loved her chardonnay.
"She would've just shaken her head and said 'oh, come on, don't throw any of that good stuff out'."
To mark the one-year anniversary on November 14, Mr Townsend says he and his siblings will gather at their parents' house for a family barbecue.
They will remember the daughter, sister, mother and friend who was adored, by so many.
"We've made mum and dad a priority and they're in their late 80s now," he said, "but what we've lost ... people just don't understand what's happened to our family.
"We just need to be together that day."
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