For some, it was the putrid smell after the floods.
For some, it was the absolute sense of hopelessness as water rushed into, then through and in some cases over our homes.
For some, it was that sick feeling walking back inside your home to see the mess. Or the look on the face of your friends.
For all, it was the delayed shock that set in after your friends and the Flood Army left after January 2011.
You just felt, "where to from here?"
It is almost seven years since the shocking floods of January 2011.
Fernvale's Lyn Lynch is one of more than 6000 Queenslanders who will from Monday begin one of Australia's largest-ever class actions to seek compensation from Seqwater, the managers of Wivenhoe and Somerset dams.
These Queenslanders believe Seqwater did not adequately consider rainfall projections and mismanaged the dams.
Ms Lynch was a single mum in 2011 with two young daughters living in a house at Fernvale she had designed and "largely built herself".
Fernvale is just around the corner from Wivenhoe Dam. Her home in Poole Road went under to the rooftops.
"We were one of the worst hit here," Ms Lynch remembers.
"We had so much rain. I think it was something like 20 inches up to 2.30pm on that day. And then it eased off."
Ms Lynch and her partner John went to have a look at the floodwaters around their home with their granddaughter, Emily.
By 5pm the water began rising rapidly. It went up to her rooftops.
It began to flow through the homes in Fernvale's Poole Street.
She thought back to the number of homes flooded in her street, counting them as she went.
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. I'd say 15 on our side of the street. I would say 40 or 50 homes in my little area."
Seven years on, Ms Lynch is still angry.
"The thing that really irks me about it is that there was no warning from Seqwater. There was no phone calls. There was just no warning that they were opening the gates on us.
"There was just nothing. No police, no council. Just nothing."
Pure instinct forced them to leave their home.
"By the time we got back down here there were helicopters - boosh, boosh, boosh - and people's belongings everywhere, caught up in the trees.
"There were trucks and cars and people everywhere. It was like a war zone."
Afterwards, she and John and her grandchildren helped clean out the mud, helped pile up the furniture and slowly put the house back together.
The couple lost eight months of income from their property maintenance company and she wrestled with insurance companies for years.
Like many Queenslanders, she received some money from then-premier Anna Bligh's Premier's Flood Appeal where thousands contributed.
"I call it the people's fund. God bless it," Ms Lynch said.
However, she would like answers.
"This was my home. It was something I was going to leave my kids. Something of worth. If you lived along the river at Brisbane you have recovered your value," she said.
"But we have lost the value in our home. It's just never come back again."
Maurice Blackburn lawyers will on Monday begin the class action in the New South Wales Supreme Court for "more than 6000 Queenslanders".
How it will the court action proceed?
Maurice Blackburn will begin with their case of Fairfield Garden's sports shop owner, Vince Rodriguez, who lost everything. The first two weeks will be heard before Christmas.
They will then present four case studies in February 2018: one flood victim from the Lockyer Creek, one from the Bremer River, one from Moggill on the Brisbane River and another where only personal items were destroyed, while their home was not affected.
Ms Lynch is the second of those case studies.
Maurice Blackburn principal Rebecca Gilsenan will begin the first two weeks of the trial on Monday before Justice Robert Beech-Jones. Justice Beech-Jones will travel to Queensland in early 2018 to view the locations in the trial, which could take three months.
"Our clients have waited a very long time for this day to come and are very much looking forward to having the issue heard in court," Ms Gilsenan said.
"At the heart of our case we will demonstrate that the dam operators did not follow their dam manual in key respects," he said.
"And the most significant respect is that they did not take into account rainfall forecasts."
Seqwater will defend its actions in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
"We have never wavered from our belief that our flood engineers did an extraordinary job in the most difficult and demanding circumstances. This position has not changed," a spokesman said.
"The January 2011 event was one of the most damaging and extreme natural flood disasters ever experienced in our region. Wivenhoe Dam received inflows much greater than the 1974 flood.
"The January flood event, while devastating to many south-east Queenslanders, was a consequence of extremely heavy rainfall across the catchments upstream and downstream of the Wivenhoe Dam and not the operation of the dams."
Declaration: Tony Moore's home flooded in 2011. He is not part of the class action.
