When the neighbouring community of Daguragu started flooding this week, Kalkarindji's art centre manager Penny Smith realised things weren't looking good.
"We had people on roofs over in Daguragu who had to be helicoptered over after a few days of being cut off from food and communication and power," she said.
"And also the little community of Pigeon Hole, they ended up sitting on a little hill nearby to keep out of the water, and they had to be helicoptered down a few at a time."
As the Victoria River and creeks that divide the two communities swelled dangerously, Ms Smith and her staff rushed into action in the Karungkarni Art and Culture Centre.
"When it hit it was time to get on the running shoes and get everything out and shuttle it to a storage space on higher ground, we took all the artworks out," she said.
As well as precious artworks, her priority was to save a collection of artefacts the local Gurindji community had just received.
"We had a particular set of artefacts that had just been repatriated to us and I had been preparing to have an open day for the community to come and see them.
"So we had this beautiful collection of boomerangs and coolamons and spears, they were the first to go to the safe storage."
Artefacts significant to NT land rights movement
Kalkarindji's Gurindji community was the site of the historic start to the Northern Territory's land rights movement when Aboriginal workers walked off the Wave Hill station in 1966.
Gurindji leader Vincent Lingiari's people's land rights were famously recognised by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, and their ownership of a large local area was confirmed by the federal court in 2020.
Ms Smith said the artefacts were brought from Wave Hill Station around the 1960s.
"The senior male elders had already inspected them and decided which were appropriate for the public to see," she said.
"We got all sorts of items that came from a family of a gentleman who used to come out here as a hawker, and later became a federal Labor politician — Ben Humphreys.
"Before he passed away he told his family about the artefacts, and when he died they decided to repatriate them back to the community.
"And he had been given these things or traded these things and we were very pleased to get them."
Ms Smith said the artefacts were an important cultural reference for younger generations.
"It's wonderful for the community members to see how things were made in the past, people are making them now, but it's great to see the old ones and the types of wood they used and how they decorated things.
"We plan to show them to the public first and then establish a Gurindji heritage centre, which we plan to establish out of the flood zone."
Locals fear 'very sad' return to flooded homes
By the time Ms Smith and the centre's staff had saved what they could, the art centre was inundated.
"The water was about a metre deep, all the furniture has floated, it was being washed up against one of the walls."
She is a member of the community's local emergency committee, and like many locals would have liked more warning of the flood.
"We got some warning but I don't think anyone thought it would be so severe, the situation at Dagurgu particularly was dire."
She said many people in the community have been asking why there were not more rain and river gauges in the region, which the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and emergency services could use to provide local communities with early warnings.
"In this community I have been on committees for many years and there have been many requests for this sort of thing," she said.
The BOM and Northern Territory Police have acknowledged the region lacks early warning infrastructure.
"We act on information and forecasts that are available at the time, the rain was in areas that aren't recorded so the rise was fairly quick," NT Police regional controller Danny Bacon said.
When asked why the area doesn't have more rain and river gauges, Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles defended her government's response.
"We don't want to unnecessarily evacuate people but at the same time we want to make sure we can get them out as early as possible, but it's the weather and at times it can be difficult to predict," she said.
Ms Smith was among the last residents evacuated to Darwin on Friday and her house has so far avoided being flooded.
But many people from the community, including Nicolas Lingiari, have lost everything.
"The flooding took all of our stuff with it, our fridges, TV, most of our clothes," he said.
"It made me worried about my kids, it was pretty scary, and one of my cousins got bit by a croc; he's okay, but limping now."
Ms Smith is already worried what the community will find when they can return.
"The sewage, the septic system is totally under water and there are questions about how long the clean up will take.
"A lot of people have lost their photos and other personal things, it's very sad."
