WATER views at Toronto may be popular, but the cyclonic storms that lifted the lake have one unfortunate home owner a little bit too close to the edge.
Tianna Brien knew it was raining hard, but she wasn't quite ready for a house to float past her Toronto home during her morning coffee.
The house, which moves quickly along the Lake Macquarie shore in a torrent of flood water, floats past easily in footage filmed about 6.30am on Tuesday.
"I thought it was a boat or something," Ms Brien said.
"It just looks like half a house."
While she lives on the shoreline Ms Brien said the structure was unfamiliar, indicating it had travelled a distance before reaching her.
The houseboat, which some locals said was moored at Toronto, travelled below the Main Road bridge before coming to rest "a fair way" along in Fennell Bay, where it was secured.
Ms Brien said the spectacle was a clear warning to anyone who thought about chancing their hand through flood waters.
Ringing police, Ms Brien said she was asked to repeat the unusual spectacle several times to authorities.
"It was going pretty fast," she said.
"[Going through floodwater] is just stupid."
Ms Brien's sister Hannah and her boyfriend Khai Nilsson found the house-come-boat at the end of their street a short time later, tied up by volunteers at the end of Fennell Bay's Margaret Street.
They said the house had travelled more than a kilometre on water, and the fact it was unfamiliar probably meant it was from even further up stream.
"I was just like, how did that even happen?" Mr Nilsson said.
Ms Brien, whose property has lacked power since 1am, said she was prepared if electricity stayed off overnight.
"We've got a little gas cooker so we can just make coffee," she said.
Originally published as House afloat on Lake Macquarie by Newcastle Herald.
