1News first met Puketapu resident Sally Prins after her family farm and home of decades was destroyed by floodwaters caused by Cyclone Gabrielle. But her smile and humour were not so easily swept away.
She narrowly escaped death when she swam from her bathroom, through the kitchen and took a big breath before diving under the front door. She then treaded water outside her house, waiting for the flood to rise even higher so family could help her get up onto the roof, to wait for a helicopter rescue.
A year on, Prins is living in a house in suburban Napier and said she hasn't processed what she went through and how close she came to being taken by the flood, but remains grateful to have survived.
"It's no use going backwards because it's happened and, you know, we're lucky we got out with our lives.
"Eleven people didn't. It could have been a lot worse than what it was," she told 1News.
A year ago, Prins was wearing a green jersey with silt up to her shins and caked on her hands as she helped salvage a few precious possessions. Holding a broom and looking at what silt and floodwater had done to her slice of paradise, she still had a smile at times during our visit, using humour to get through the nightmare visited upon them.
"You had to joke about it because you wouldn't be here," she said at the time.
'No such thing as normal'
Her survival story on 1 News resonated with viewers, one older woman sending Sally a blanket with a note that she thought Sally might be cold.
Today, she's wearing a white linen shirt without a speck of the silt that smothered so much of her home.
"It's amazing isn't it, white? Exactly... today I thought it was a bit special," she says.
Her fighting spirit and humour remained.
"Before we went back to the house... you're thinking it might have been normal but, yeah, no such thing... that you could have saved a lot of stuff but, no.
"You had to joke about it really because, if not, you'd cry," she says.
Apples, grass... sheep
The family have been fixing up the farm over the past year but their home was unlikely to be lived in again.
"Just mind-boggling the work that's been done by my younger son and David and a couple of his friends just to get it all done.
"You actually wonder where that year's gone and when you look back at what you've achieved this year, it's quite a lot compared to what it was. You see apples on the tree... this time last year, there might have been apples on the tree but they're full of silt on top of the apples so they couldn't harvest them... It's just nice; the grass green, fences up, sheep, dogs running around."
Living in the city came with new experiences after 50 years of farm life.
"Cars going up and down the road... smelling neighbours cooking food and when they've got visitors outside talking and you're just thinking 'Oh my goodness' just cause we never had it and there's not a lot of bird life here," Prins said.
Plans are being drawn up for a new home to make memories in. This time, further inland on their farm and much higher than their destroyed home.
'You don't want your grandkids going through that'
"We didn't want to live down there anymore because you know who's to say it's not going to happen again in five years or three years or whatever and you know?
"We're getting older and we just don't want to go through all that again. You don't want your grandkids and that going through what I [did]. So, yeah, that was the decision. "
Their Sudley Farm sign is back on the fence after being washed away and later found down the Nuhaka River.
Two of Sally's dogs drowned when her home was flooded.
"It was either them or us [to save] and it had to be us... it came so fast," she says.
Six months ago, a friend surprised her with a new dog, which has also been keeping Sally busy.
"She's named after the cyclone and so her name is Gabi. It's like having a little child in the household but quite loveable when it suits you," Prins said, to her new little friend.
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