NSW floods: Amber Stevens was airlifted from atop a water tank with her baby, husband and two dogs

We rang the SES but they couldn't get to us, there was no boat,' says the resident of Tichborne in the state's central west

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Amber Stevens went to bed on Sunday night expecting her paddock could get a little wet, nothing more. You didn't get big floods in Tichborne - hadn't for 70 years.

The next evening, she was huddled on top of a water tank, with her baby Finn, husband and two dogs, watching a sea of flood water engulf her home in the usually barren central west of New South Wales.