Putting back the pieces, flood hero finds solace in art

Judd McKenna sits in his cafe, not far from the intersection where he rescued a stricken driver whose car was about to be swallowed by a swirling torrent of water.

Around the corner is the bridge where he helped Eugowra grandmother Diane Smith onto higher ground as floodwaters inundated the central western NSW village on November 14, 2022.

In what would be the last time Mr McKenna saw the popular 60-year-old local, she gripped his hand as she stepped off a fire truck with a plan to go and help other evacuees.

Mr McKenna points toward the house where he and a young cop rescued a terrified mother and her son, who she had lifted onto a roof as a wall of water roared towards them.

More than three years on from the disaster, the ex-truck driver finds it a little easier to talk about the day it happened.

What brings his emotions closer to the surface is his road to recovery and how others around him might be quietly enduring.

"Far too many big, burly blokes, (like me), an ex-rugby league player, ex-truck driver, can't show emotion," Mr McKenna tells AAP out the back of his family's eatery, The Fat Parcel, his voice wavering.

"It's very important that it becomes more accepted that men ... are able to show that emotion, be sad when they're sad, shed a tear."

"If you can let that emotion out instead of building it up, then the world's a better place for everybody."

The Fat Parcel - named for Eugowra's historic Fat Lamb Hotel that burnt down in 2012 - became a precious gathering place after the flood almost wiped the village off the map.

The community of 600 lost two of its own. Ms Smith and 85-year-old Les Vugec died in the deluge after the narrow, winding Mandagery Creek broke its banks with brutal force.

Standing behind the cafe counter in the weeks and months afterwards, Mr McKenna became an accidental counsellor for other survivors.

The pressure and lingering trauma eventually eroded his mental health and he sought help.

Mr McKenna now spends his days in a shed behind the cafe, channelling his emotions into art.

He builds sculptures from scrap metal, discarded machinery parts, old spanners and chain links bought at clearing sales or salvaged from around town.

A sculpture of a bear watches on as locals gather for coffee, next to a panther, birds, kangaroos and a guitar-wielding Ned Kelly, a homage to Eugowra's bushranger history.

Each bit of metal holds meaning.

"It's another story that piece of material has been through," Mr McKenna says.

"To be able to put those bits and pieces back into other things, it's just a story that we will never know."

Many of his Fat Artz works have been donated for local fundraisers, while others have found homes in city and country gardens.

One, a large emu, stands tall on a lush lawn at a property near Mandagery Creek.

"I've used that creation to help me be a better person," Mr McKenna says of his sculptures.

"I get a big kick out of that.

"I can give someone else a gift from the gift that it gave me."