After the lime-coloured lid was removed, the headline 'Disaster!', printed in bold, stood out immediately.

The words accompanying it captured the firsthand accounts of the 1971 floods that devastated much of the Bega Valley Shire.

"Tremendous damage was caused by one of the worst floods in the history of the Far South Coast. From Narooma in the north to Eden on the Victorian border, the entire district and across the mountain ranges to include Bemboka, Candelo and other centres, was deluged by phenomenal rain," the article read.

Within another paper, anecdotes captured the people of the floods; like Scotchy Whyman who waited on a haystack for hours until flood waters subsided, Frank Heffernan whose drums of diesel fuel floated away, Joe Russell with his radio unit who was a hero for transmitting important messages with little rest over 48 hours, and Jim Rixon who stood on about one acre of land with 200 cattle.

The owner of the antique newspapers, and protector of Bega District News history, Shirley Dawson, reminisced as she saw the stories, remembering a man on the old Bega bridge using a stick to push down logs in floodwaters to protect the structure.

Within the box, Shirley rediscovered memories that included rarely seen family photographs, her father's favourite razor blade, and images of her childhood farm in Numbugga; a property her mother never wanted to leave.

"I just thought it was all history and people will probably want to know history, and my mother was always keeping all the history that she could keep," she said.

While she remembered the floods during 1971, it was the fires of 1952 that vividly remained burned into her mind.

The BDN headline on February 1 stated 'Our Valley is Blackened and Devastated', the article revealing the journalist's thoughts.

"Today, after seven hours of horror last Friday, the lush green hills of the normally bountiful Bega Valley, have been laid waste; are charred and blackened with gaunt wreckage of the worst bush fire rampage ever known in the history of the district," the newsprint read.

Shirley said she would never forget her father George asking her to go over to their farm's sheds, retrieve all the sack bags available and soak them with water from the tanks, while her oldest brother Colin was tasked to round up 120 dairy cattle while riding a scared, grey horse.

"We stood out on the road and watched them light up, and mum said, 'Go and put the wireless on and see where [the fire has] gone,' and ten minutes later they lit in Numbugga," she said, ash transported by wild winds.