NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Group Captain Owen Tydd has been an RFS member for almost 60 years and has assisted the NSW State Emergency Service (SES) with many floods.

The Gunnedah local said what's missing this time around is information and the flood knowledge of locals in town isn't as strong as what it used to be.

"Gunnedah has changed a little bit in the fact that a lot of the people down in the flood area are now old people," he said.

"A lot of that knowledge has been lost because people have got a lot older, they haven't had a flood for a long time and there's so much change in the topography around town.

"There's been channels and banks put in and a lot of younger families have purchased there also."

Group Captain Tydd said things happened during this flood he "never believed would have happened".

"A lot of strange things happened," he said.

"At one stage they were sand bagging Premer pub - that's a long way from Coxs Creek!

"One thing that really did influence this flood, I feel, is that Coxs Creek had a virtually record flood and it banked the Namoi up, and it wouldn't let it get away.

"It was a combination of the Mooki and Coxs Creek, they both headwater very close together out virtually in Coolah Tops National Park and there was very heavy rainfall in that area."

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After weeks of assisting the SES on the ground with resupply, evacuations and sand bagging, he said the local RFS volunteers finally knocked off last Friday, feeling relieved this week's rain predictions weren't as bad as what they'd anticipated.

"It was one of those very dirty, tiring, strenuous jobs," he said.

"When the floods cut everyone off we got involved in the supply of tucker, and it takes a lot of organising to coordinate the helicopter, tucker, customers and everything together.

"I was involved in the 1971 Breeza flood, which was a big one out there, but that was a different set of circumstances all together, things are so much more sophisticated now the way it's done."

But with catchments across the region full to the brim, volunteers remained poised for what's to come.

"I've been predicting a big flood in February for years, and that's still well and truly on the cards," Group Captain Tydd said.

"February seems to be the flooding month, but if it does we'll handle it."

SES spokesman David Rankine said from their perspective, crews were extremely thankful the water didn't get higher, as perhaps was predicted for Gunnedah.

"It reached 8.6m. We saw that flood peak change a number of times during the peak of the flooding a week and a half ago based on unprecedented water we saw come out of the Mooki River down through Breeza Station," he said.

"That rainfall in the Mooki catchment put extra pressure on the Namoi River when it arrived and we saw the events of that."

He described the events as "so different" to a Peel River into Namoi River flood.

"The added impact of the Mooki saw flooding in a few different areas in the community and rises a lot quicker at some stages, so we are always seeking to improve the information that we can glean from these events so when the next one comes we can be as prepared as possible to warn and assist the community as it manifests," he said.

"We had very few flood rescues and we really want to thank the Gunnedah community for making very sensible decisions on the road.

"Many were livestock rescues, which is a cautionary tale of the need to move livestock to higher ground earlier on."

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