Severe flooding in the Northern Territory is causing a logistical nightmare for people living on both sides of the NT-WA border, with floodwaters cutting off key road and rail links and impacting the supply of fresh food and supplies.
Heavy rain and flooding forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from communities near Katherine late last week and continued over the weekend.
On Sunday, floodwaters cut the northern freight route across the NT-WA border, with the Victoria Highway now closed between the Buntine Highway intersection and Timber Creek.
It means the East Kimberley's sole remaining road freight route has been blocked, after flooding in January cut off access from the state's south.
With shelves emptying in Kununurra's only two supermarkets, WA authorities are now monitoring the supply of fresh food and other essential goods as they consider alternate routes via air or sea.
Wyndham-East Kimberley shire president David Menzel said residents were "on edge" and bracing for potentially lengthy supply chain disruptions.
"Three or four days without a chance to restock means that everyone's running out of fresh fruit and vegetables," he said.
Mr Menzel said he hoped to see supplies flown across the border from the territory.
"There's plenty of airlifting capacity sitting in Katherine and I'm pretty sure we've probably got trailers full of fresh produce probably sitting in Katherine at the moment," he said.
"So the problems can be solved — it's just some decisions made by some key decision makers and that's what we'll be pushing for over the next day or two."
Fresh food running low
Kununurra resident Troy Sawyer said supermarket selves were "pretty scant".
"I've just come from Coles and IGA just trying to find some fresh, green vegetables for my family, so there's not really a lot on offer," he said.
"Most people are probably used to storing a few extra cans and bit and pieces in their freezers when it's available for times like this.
"But even so, after a couple of months all of those sorts of stocks start to run down a bit as well.
"There's not even many frozen veges in so surely there's something to be done, that you can fly something in just to provide some basic foodstuffs."
East Kimberley resident Colleen Carter called for similar relief provided to Fitzroy Crossing during record flooding in January.
"Well if it's going to be down for a number of days … we've got a lot of old people and sick people there too, and children, we do need our fresh fruit and veges," she said.
"They done it for Fitzroy why can't they do it for us?"
Rail line to Darwin will take days to fix
In the territory, a long stretch of the rail line connecting Darwin and Adelaide has been closed due to flood damage and freight is being re-routed by road.
Over the weekend, authorities advised that a 200 metre section of the line linking South Australia to Darwin had been washed away by floodwaters north of Tennant Creek.
Aurizon, which leases the track, said it had closed almost 300 kilometres of track between Tennant Creek and Newcastle Waters for safety reasons.
"Aurizon is working with customers for the movement of critical freight by road," the company said in a statement.
"Services will be resumed as soon as it is safe to do so."
NT Police commander and regional controller Danny Bacon said the rail line was expected to be repaired and back in service in four to five days.
"It is going to take some time for that railway corridor to be repaired, so at the moment, critical goods and freight are being offloaded in Alice Springs and [being transported] by way of highway," he told ABC Radio Darwin.
NT Road Transport Association chief executive Louise Bilato said truck drivers were closely monitoring parts of the road network that were damaged in the previous floods.
"The critical issue for us is the state of the Stuart Highway," she told ABC Radio Darwin.
"The Barkly [Highway] was closed over the weekend. It's reopened, but it's had huge amount of water on it.
"So we are very reliant on the Stuart Highway holding up."
"There are big potholes in the road, and we know that there's been a few trucks that have sustained damage on that road … and there will be a lot more truck movements for the week whilst the rail is down."
Evacuations complete but no clear timeline for return
Commander Bacon said the evacuation of flood-affected communities was completed over the weekend, with all residents of Kalkarindji, Daguragu and Pigeon Hole now relocated in Darwin.
He said about 600 people were being housed in the former COVID quarantine centre in Howard Springs, while some others were staying with family or friends or receiving medical care.
Two other sites originally slated for temporary accommodation, Foskey's Pavilion and Marrara Stadium, are not in use but are being kept on standby.
Commander Bacon said there was not yet a clear timeline on when residents would be able to return home.
"A lot of that will be dependent upon the assessment of the dwellings that were inundated," he said.
"We can't return residents to the communities unless it's safe to do so.
"Not only for the residents, but also for the critical infrastructure in the communities — your sewerage, your power."
He said residents of Kalkarindji, where only about half the homes were inundated, could be the first to return.
