NOTHING can explain the devastating feeling of seeing dead cattle wash downstream, and it is evident pastoralists this week struggled to put it into words.
It will be impossible to put a number on the amount of stock lost at Kalyeeda Station until muster later in the year, but manager Camille Camp predicts it could be high.
The cattle she has seen floating past in the rapid floodwaters have not been her own, but rather from the neighbouring property - hundreds of kilometres away.
"The waters are so strong that everything's just been washed away," Ms Camp said.
"Our cattle are going to end up on someone else's property - they're not going to be dead on our station."
A week ago, looking out her homestead window, Ms Camp saw masses of brown, murky water decorated with the tops of stark trees - as the Fitzroy River came within 20 metres from her homestead.
With the water receding this week, Ms Camp's main concern has switched from flooding to the potential fire risk from wet hay bales.
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The hay is stored in a shed with a range of expensive machinery, which Ms Camp is unable to move as the shed is still flooded.
"Our biggest concern at the moment is the hay catching fire, because it's wet - they get so hot that they just explode," Ms Camp said.
"If the hay catches alight, everything is going to go up."
The flooding has killed a lot of the buffel grass in paddocks across the region, which is going to increase input costs for the current season.
GoGo Station manager Chris Towne said since the water has gone down, there was definitely a "bad smell around the place," with all the mud and dirt grasses.
"It's definitely a different look around here, with all the buffel grass died off from the mud on it," Mr Towne said.
"Some of the other grasses, they'll be alright, but we won't know for another couple of weeks how the pasture is going to respond."
Mr Towne was hoping for more rain next week, which could wash off some of the mud and help save the grass.
It's going to be a different season this year for Mr Towne, who has a large amount of neighbouring cattle on his property with no way to return them.
"Because the main bridge between us and Fitzroy is all washed away, we can't get to the western side to some of the neighbours - so we will probably just stockpile the cattle here and when there is an opening to take them across we will take them across," Mr Towne said.
As with a lot of pastoral stations, Mr Towne is desperately looking for a pair of extra hands to repair fencing and help with various clean-up jobs.
This is especially true at Kalyeeda Station, where there is only Ms Camp, her husband Lach and baby Jack.
This has made it difficult for them to assess damage and clean up, as Mr Camp can't do it on his own and Ms Camp has to look after their son.
Pastoralists at stations along the Fitzroy River are assessing damage this week having had homesteads and sheds flooded, after the river peaked at 15.81 metres on Thursday morning in an unprecedented weather event for the region.
Associated damage costs from the flood - on top of livestock and houses - will also need to be assessed, Kimberley Pilbara Cattlemen's Association business development officer Lauren Bell said.
"It's not just the houses, but the plant and equipment that you typically have in the workshops and stuff around the houses," Ms Bell said.
"Then they've also suffered stock losses, the number of that is still to be determined."
Ms Camp has seen fencing, bores and solar panels floating down the river.
Being at the beginning of the wet season, which typically doesn't finish until April, there is the potential for many more rainfall events in the coming months.
With the bridge at the Fitzroy River cut off and damaged, there is concern too about how those remaining on pastoral stations will be able to replenish their own food supplies.
Blina Station manager Jamie Morrison has lived in the Fitzroy Crossing area for the past 30 years, and says he has never seen anything like ex-tropical cyclone Ellie.
"We've never had a live system set on us for this long, dropping this much, this one just sort of sat on top of us for five days," Mr Morrison said.
"We're all good, but I think there are others that have water through their homestead and are in a bit of trouble - we just hope they're all OK."
At other stations along the river, there have been reports of cattle, especially newborn calves, struggling from hypothermia, according to Bunuba Dawangarri Aboriginal Corporation spokeswoman Andrea Myers.
"The weak, and the young calves, are getting hypothermia because it's been continually raining for five, six days," Ms Myers said.
"They're just cold, and then the wind hits them - they're struggling to have places to get dry and to warm up."
There are concerns that the livestock tragedy from the Queensland floods may repeat in WA, where the death toll of cattle continued long after the initial flooding event.
The exposure and the mud covering animals, which dries to a thick cement, makes it almost impossible for them to move far to food or water drops.
"We do have concerns, learning from what happened in Queensland, where a lot of adults drowned in the initial flooding event, but then a lot that survived subsequently died due to exhaustion and exposure," Ms Bell said.
"We are concerned that once this immediate emergency situation is over, we will need to be assessing feed availability and making sure that hay and hard feed is available to help them push through."
Ms Bell said it was important to remember this was people's livelihoods and this was an extremely upsetting time for pastoralists.
"It's been really distressing for a lot of people because that's their livelihood and cattle - stuff that they've taken a lot of care of," Ms Bell said.
Mr Morrison could breathe a sigh of relief this week when the flood waters receded, as he doesn't believe he has lost much cattle - only a bit of fencing.
Blina Station was one of many pastoral stations in the Kimberley region to become a victim of ex-tropical cyclone Ellie, as record rainfalls were recorded across the northern regions of the State.
At the height of the flooding last week, Mr Morrison described his station as "an inland sea" and was very concerned for his cattle.
He was running blind with a limited idea of how his 40,000 herd cattle were fairing out in the tropical system, having not been able to get any helicopters in the air to check for low lying cattle.
"We're worried we might have lost some stuff, but we're hopeful that we haven't," he said last week.
The helicopters in Fitzroy Crossing had been booked solid to check various pastoral stations when weather permits, but were prioritising human rescues and food drop-offs.
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Mr Morrison was trying not to assume the worst.
"We're concerned for our cattle and we feel for them in the elements," he said.
"That's a big worry and big concern, but there's not much we can do until this weather clears."
Ms Camp and her family evacuated Kalyeeda Station last Wednesday afternoon - a precaution in case flood levels came any higher into the homestead, which Ms Camp described as "devastating".
"We've still got animals here that we can't take with us," Ms Camp said.
"Hopefully the homestead complex doesn't go under and they will be alright.
"But I'm pretty devastated to leave the animals behind."
At the time, Ms Camp had about 40 cattle which had floated downstream were sitting on the dry land by the homestead, while about 14 were sitting on the sandbridge.
As the flood hit, they watched their son's new pony get washed away.
"So we have cattle in our homestead area - which is pretty crazy, because they would have come quite a long way," Ms Camp said.