If there is a breach in the 21km bank that is constantly checked by the Jervois Private Irrigation District Trust, government and landowners, the farm she runs with husband Kym and their son will have all 93 hectares of pasture land flooded.

“In the big picture of what’s happening around us, we are very lucky, but we realise that we could be like everybody else in two hours,” Bartlett says, referring to other flooded farming properties.

There is land higher up to home the family’s 410 cattle, and the dairy where 240 of those cows are milked is safe too, but it would severely impact feed, shelter and create significant extra work.

Bartlett, a local Murray Darling Basin engagement officer, says the stress of constantly watching the levee and seeing others breach to inundate farms in places like Mypolonga adds to the emotional turmoil.

“You can’t get them out of your mind, you think you know what they are going through, people are having to make big, life-affecting decisions … can they continue what they are doing?” she says.

Thirteen farms shelter behind the same levee protecting the Bartletts’ property.

Farms built on reclaimed floodplains stretching from Mannum and downstream to the lower lakes and Coorong are protected by 110kms of levees, some 43km privately owned.

Levees have been reinforced with most built decades ago and “generally designed for flows equivalent to those experienced in 1974 at 183GL flow at the SA border”, according to the Environment and Water Department.

Four major levees are holding firm at Jervois, Woods Point, Riverglen and Monteith, with Bartlett saying locals are joining forces to help those most at risk with jobs like sandbagging.

Bartlett says volunteers fill bags, including some older residents arriving to help “hold open bags” or deliver freshly baked biscuits to support locals.

The State Emergency Service has more free sandbags available today at Bowhill Community Centre, Mannum Football Club and Murray Bridge Showgrounds from 9am until 3pm.

Further upstream of Murray Bridge, the Mypolonga History Museum is now hosting a Community Flood Drop-in Centre every Tuesday to support locals with a chat and a cup of tea.

While LiveStock SA is pulling together fodder donations to help farmers suffering with food shortages for stock as grazing areas are flooded.

Livestock SA President Joe Keynes said farmers need support while they work out the severity of the flooding for their business and make plans for recovery.

“Livestock SA has been proud to support producers with fodder in the past and we know that this can ease the short-term burden while producers can make future plans in the recovery phase,”  Keynes says.

Beston Global Food Company has several hundred staff working at its cheese plant at Jervois. The company’s agribusiness and milk supply director Hamish Browning says the site should be safe from flooding but some milk suppliers are suffering.

The Smart family in Mypolonga is one supplier deeply impacted, with their dairy filled with state-of-the-art equipment along with its surrounding pastures now flooded, with about 500 cows relocated to higher ground.

David Smart (front) and family business members before flooding hit their dairy. Photo: Belinda Willis

David Smart, his three sons and son-in-law are now making the tough decision to sell their cows and business.

Another supplier’s dairy access road for the Beston milk truck was cut off. Browning said the Beston team managed to build a mobile milk vat that the farmer can fill with milk at his dairy, then transport to another access road using a tractor.

While the flood water is affecting some suppliers, Browning said there are about 45 farms across the state ensuring milk supply is on target at Beston.

And he said the Beston workforce is working to support those impacted by floods.

“We do expect some minor effects to our production, noting we had a forecast 155 million litres (milk intake) for the year, we don’t see that number being materially affected by this event, but we are very conscious of real people, real human beings being impacted,” Browning said.

“I think there’s enormous community spirit, I think there’s enormous amounts of empathy, we have staff that live in the Murraylands and live in locations like Mannum and Murray Bridge.”