Two years after silt and mud trashed them, Northern Rivers schools rise from ruin

Dave Lees, principal of the newly rebuilt Mullumbimby public school, vividly recalls the emotion of his first visit to assess the flood damage

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My first memories were just the silt and the mud," says Dave Lees, summoning his impressions from the day he returned to the Mullumbimby public school campus, the day after it was swallowed by flood waters.

It was just a brown, smelly, clay-laden, dirty space. It looked like another planet," the school principal says.