Sindy Hooper did not believe the people who tried to assure her their property would not be flooded.
"I have seen it before," she said.
She and husband Lyall are sharemilkers on a farm in the lower Waitotara Valley. She arrived home from a wedding on Friday night to find her husband and two teenage sons had gone hunting for the weekend, further up the valley.
It rained heavily all night. On Saturday morning she got a message to say her husband and sons would not be back that day, due to slips and flooding closing the road in the upper valley.
It was still raining and she and the farm worker moved the heifers to higher ground and gave them more feed.