As his Murwillumbah home was flooded, Brett Bugg had to rely on the bravery of strangers to get his family out of danger.
"It's getting dark. You're getting desperate, there's nowhere to go," he said.
"We hear a motor coming up the road. There's two blokes in this little tinnie.
Mr Bugg said the unknown men "probably saved our lives", but the experience left him with a question for state and federal authorities.
"When everyone needed you, where were you?" he said.
"We were all waiting for choppers. Where was the army? No one was helping here. There was no coordination, there was no rescue."
Not many lessons learnt from previous floods
Murwillumbah, like many other areas around northern New South Wales, was cut-off for almost five days and had little to no internet or phone coverage.
Mr Bugg relied on strangers to help him reopen his business.
"There were 20-30 people in there, cleaning the floors, swishing out water, getting rid of mud," he said.
Murwillumbah District Business Chamber president Rebecca Whan said the community response had been "organic" with a volunteer hub set up by locals.
"Where was the coordinated recovery response? We've been through this in 2017," she said.
"And it doesn't seem like there's been many lessons learned."
'Chaotic around town'
Ms Whan said the "enormity of the situation was only becoming more and more evident each day".
"We've still got people stuck on properties with no power, no food," she said.
Ms Whan said there needed to be an "overarching framework" to provide a coordinated response.
"We're just not getting that at the moment," she said.
"It's absolutely chaotic around town."
Ms Whan said people had lost their homes, their business and their car.
"They've got absolutely nothing and businesses have lost millions of dollars in stock, so a $50,000 recovery grant is just not going to cut it," she said.
ADF deploys hundreds of troops
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has admitted the flood response has been "unacceptable".
He said the state government would "reflect, review and be completely honest" about what could have been done better.
The Australian Defence Force has defended its response, including as to why only four aircraft were involved in the flood rescues last week.
Major-General David Thomas said there had been 71 helicopter missions, 113 people rescued and 637 ADF personnel operating in northern New South Wales.
"Over the next 24 hours, we'll have another 626 available for tasking," Major-General Thomae said.
He said "dreadful" conditions across northern New South Wales had made ADF operations difficult.
"As the weather has improved, we have been doing airdrops and getting out to those communities," he said.
"We will be prioritising those communities most in need, most isolated, in the coming days."
In the meantime, Mr Bugg said he hoped to find the men who saved his family.
"I just want to say thanks. It's pretty emotional, you know. We could have been stuck there," he said.
"I know that they've saved heaps of other people's lives, and they're just two blokes in a tinnie."
