He lives in Mountain Avenue - as its name suggests, it rises and falls. Mr Strong lives on one of those rises and so the water rushing past isn't as much of a problem for him.

It's a different story for those who live down the bottom, close to the drain that runs between houses and under the road.

"I'm a bit higher up so the water runs off but I just had the usual little leaks," Mr Strong said.

"The garage had about two inches of water in it so I just had to empty the garage and get all the water out and dried out. That's pretty insignificant issue considering what everybody else copped.

"I've got an easement at the bottom of my street here - the poor guys that are near it get inundated with mud every time.

"I see this happen all the time - it's always the same cause."

That cause is due to the city being positioned at the bottom of the escarpment and, when it rains, the water flows down picking up mud, branches and leaves as it makes its way through houses.

"I think where we live with the escarpment and the short steep water easements it's just prone to a lot of debris along these water easements from further up," he said.

"It just gets washed down and it clogs up the drains. Then the water's got nowhere to go when it goes up over the top and all the mud and debris goes into other people's homes or floods the streets."

Mr Strong said he wasn't interested in "council bashing" and understood flood mitigation in a place like Wollongong was a tricky thing to solve.

But he felt residents needed to be given a clearer indication of the council's approach to dealing with flooding now and into the future.

"I think residents kind of deserve at least some transparency around what they're planning - or if they haven't been planning anything maybe they should start planning stuff," he said.

"I think residents don't know what they do with in respect to management of these things. It's always the same issues when these rain events occur.

"We had a good week or two's notice that this was coming the residents did what they could for their homes to prepare for it. I'm just wondering what the council does when they know this is coming."