When Halls school bus driver Jeri Hall walked in the torrential, flooding rain last Thursday, cut off from her Numulgi home, a neighbour saw her and plucked a spider out of her ear.

Jeri was walking to a meeting point on Lockton Road where her husband was going to meet her on his jet ski to take her the last leg of her journey home. 

The day had been an emotional journey of heroic proportions for Jeri, who had driven the school bus through heavy rains to safely deliver home children to their Whian Whian and Numulgi homes.

Jeri Hall, her husband and their children.

For the past three years, Jeri has been doing the morning and afternoon school bus runs from Lismore for Halls Bus Service (owned by her and her husband). 

She knows all the local children in Numulgi and Whian Whian and their parents, and said she’s “more than just a bus driver”. 

“We keep the kids safe and take care of them,” she said.

So, earlier that day when she noticed that the heavy rains were filling up Coopers Creek and that Numulgi Bridge was close to going under water, her first thought was “how will we get the school busses out to pick up the kids from school in Lismore?”

Numulgi Bridge as it was starting to go under water last Thursday.

“I was renovating our farm stay cottages in Numulgi where we kept the busses and my in-laws helped me to drive them out past Numulgi Bridge to the hall,” she said.

“The water was over the bridge by time we got back. So, I rang the local families who would be cut off from town and told them I was going to get their kids home from school.

“Then I called the schools and said we needed to collect some of the children.”

And so, began a mammoth coordination effort between the local schools at Woodlawn and St Carthages in Lismore.

“Woodlawn had already closed the school and kids were being bussed into Lismore - and water was already crossing road at Woodlawn,” Jeri said.

Numulgi Bridge was fully submerged by Friday.

“Then it was madness as parents were arriving at schools to pick up kids and some were on busses and I was trying to find the ones that needed to get home to Whian Whian and Numulgi.

“By then, Bangalow Road leading to Bexhill was 3/4 under water. 

“We got all the kids onto one bus in the end and I remember driving up on the road to Whian Whian Falls in the heavy rain with water gushing down hillsides – it was pretty scary.

“By the time I dropped off all the children, and parked the bus at Numulgi Hall, I knew I was going to be cut off from my home in Numulgi.

“Luckily, my husband had already picked up our kids from preschool and had made it home.

“All I had on me was my rain-soaked clothes and my phone, so I rang my husband - and he said I should walk a kilometre down the road to a point where he would meet me on his jetski.”

Like a knight in shining armour, her husband arrived and took her the final kilometre home – soaked, and emotionally exhausted.

Drone footage of the roads once they were under water.

“I’d been worried about my own family too, and when I got home to my own kids, I burst into tears and was thankful it was all over,” Jeri said.

“I’d had to be the grown up and make tough decisions all day.

“I’ve been living there for three years, but hadn’t seen the water come up so quickly before. For the water to rise one foot so quickly is insane.

“In 2017, it was a similar kind of flood – off the back off a cyclone.”

Families were stranded at Numulgi in the floods last week.

Jeri said the local families have been thanking her for getting their children home safely.

“Sometimes your job is thankless – people just expect you are there and doing it - but everyone was grateful we got the kids out of school and danger,” she said.

“There was no school run the next day either because we were all cut off from Lismore - all roads into town were closed.”

Jeri said she left a corporate job three years ago to drive the school bus when she and her husband bought the company.

“I’d never driven a school bus before, but I love it and intend to keep doing it,” she said.