With floodwaters rising and trying to get to safety, Nadia Zarb found out the screws holding in the window above her shop in Taree were on the outside.
"It was starting to get dark," she told AAP on Monday.
"And I thought I don't want to be trapped in here in the dark ... by myself."
She managed to break free and made her way to the shop's awning, from where she was rescued.
That followed the "heart-wrenching" job of saving the work of artists exhibited when she opened a new gallery space in the shop weeks earlier.
"They brought it here to showcase what they do, and it was now about to go under, so it was 'save the important stuff' as a priority."
The walls where the art used to hang have been ripped away to allow the building's frame to dry out.
What she managed to move upstairs is piled high.
"I've just got this narrow passage, in there is chockers too," Ms Zarb told AAP during a tour of the flooded shop.
"I don't know what I'm going to do ahead, it's just recovery mode at the moment.
"Just get rid of as much mud as possible, and get rid of the smell.
"It's a rotten, dirty, river smell ... and there possibly is sewage in it ... I don't know how to describe it."
It's the second flood Ms Zarb has experienced since moving to Taree about four years ago.
She said she would not know how to cope if not for community support.
"We've got the best community, we've got the support around us and I couldn't ask for anything more."
The street kerbs of Taree, like other towns along the mid-north coast, are littered with muddied mattresses, busted washing machines and wet couches as locals embark on a massive clean-up.
Five lives were lost and more than 700 were rescued by emergency services as several months of rain fell within days and rivers swallowed regional cities.
Ian Sheather can now walk by the mud-lined walls of the Taree Fisherman's Co-Op, having arrived to calf-deep mud through the building and car park on Saturday.
But he estimates it will probably take $100,000 to get the co-op back up and running.
Previous flooding in 2021 provided some guidance for raising appliances above the expected water level, but it wasn't high enough.
The Manning River reached its highest on record during the floods, surging past the mark set in 1929.
"It just kept rising and raining," Mr Sheather said.
"I knew it was going to be bad. I knew we were going to lose everything."
