A photographer in a kayak, USB-stick delivery of news pages, and an ad hoc newsroom at Macca’s… APN’s journalists tell how they got last month’s flood news out.

Reports – in a supplement to the regional publisher’s newspapers today – include the flooding of the News-Mail’s offices in Bundaberg.

The building was evacuated during the Sunday (January 27), with water rising “about waist high” destroying the contents of desks and historical records. After a succession of moves – the council offices, the racecourse and a university laboratory – the editorial team is now working from the site of the former printing plant.

APN Regional Media editorial director Steve Zeppa tells how production of some papers was moved to different sites and teams “took to the skies” to deliver papers when trucks could not get through. There were also power failures and issues with APN's email and publishing systems.

Patrick Williams tells how he and group online editor Mark Furler abandoned the Maroochydore head office – where the internet connection was down for several hours – in favour of the free wifi at McDonald's.

With different newspapers within the Australian east-coast group facing different problems following the post-Oswald floods, Zeppa says it was hard to roll out a one-size-fits-all plan: “It was a case of everyone doing what they could and working whatever hours were needed.

"These journalists were experiencing the same disaster they were reporting, and many had to put out of their minds the fact that they couldn't get back to their own homes to see what personalal damages they were facing," he said.

In Grafton, NSW, a photographer kayaked across a flooded creek to help her team get the Examiner out; in Bundaberg, a colleague charged her phone by driving “blockies” in her car so she could get articles for the News-Mail through via email. In Rockhampton and Gladstone, where communications were cut for days, journalists had to hand deliver pages of the Morning Bulletin and the Observer to printing sites on USB sticks.

"In Bundaberg, one photographer worked through the night processing video and photos but he was cut off from his home, so even though we put him up in a hotel, he had no spare change of clothes," says Zeppa.

Editor of Grafton’s Examiner Jenna Cairney moved the editorial team to her house when a levee was on the verge of breaking. With no access to the publishing system, journalists made do with email, SMS and Facebook to file copy and photographs.

Elsewhere, the Queensland Times (Ipswich) and the Warwick Daily News were not delivered on one day because printing plants were cut off by floods.

Williams joined Furler and weekend editor Damian Bathersby to prepare online coverage and reports the next day's paper, and found their was the primary source of information when the Sunshine Coast council's website crashed under pressure. Sunshinecoastedaily.com.au "kept going through the worst of the storm," Williams says.

The extensive coverage paid off, with eight million views across the group's website during the week, and the Daily's website tripling it's usual readership.

"We also kept in touch with the community via multiple social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram," he says. The Facebook page, boosted to 95,000 followers, was "the place to be for up-to-date information and to get people talking," and short video Williams made and uploaded on his iPhone scored nearly 13,000.

"It just shows who you can rely on when weather events like Oswald smash the Coast," he writes.