“Just donate a dollar as you walk past the door,” Jeanette said yesterday.

“You don’t have to be coming into the store to donate, hey, I had people on the weekend put it under the door.

“You can put five cents in or you can put hundreds of dollars, it’s up to you, whatever you can afford, I’m just going out for the people of Moree, they’re really doing it tough,” Jeanette said.

Moree’s Mehi River peaked at 10.69 metres at 10.15am last Friday, the highest the river has been since 1955.

Across the state in the past week the SES received more than 1000 calls for help and estimated 365 properties in North-West NSW had been impacted.

Deputy Premier, Andrew Stoner, described the disaster in Moree as “a mongrel flood with water converging on towns from more than one water system…entire communities isolated and residents inundated.

“There will be an enormous recovery effort required for residents and farmers not only for their crops but infrastructure too,” Mr Stoner said.

The fundraising idea came to Jeanette on Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning she decided to put a sign up on her shop window and initially raised $25 for the morning, which she said wasn’t too bad considering no-one else knew about it.

“I reckon we just missed out; if that rain band had been just a little bit over we would have copped it,” Jeanette said.

“I would hope someone would help me in the same situation.

“Anything is possible, but I thought a dollar from everyone in Inverell would give us about $12,000 and that would be very handy,” Jeanette said.

An open invitation was extended to everyone by Jeanette to go in and donate as much as they can afford for the people of Moree.

All funds raised will be donated to the Salvation Army for its work in the Moree district.