The NSW floods were bad enough. But then came the mould, and getting rid of it in winter is ‘almost impossible’

Artist and business owner Nadia Zarb in her Taree gallery where all the internal walls have been stripped because of damage from record floods that hit the town. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

Nadia Zarb can already see, and smell, the mould in her art gallery in Taree. The building on Victoria Street was inundated during flooding that hit the Hunter and mid-north coast of New South Wales at the end of May.

Water filled the storage space below ground, the art supply store on the ground floor, and the loft exhibition space, reaching to just below Zarb’s home on the top level.