Just two flavours of chips and pub theme nights: how these isolated Queensland towns have survived being cut off for weeks

Bedourie, home to 150 people, has avoided damage after weeks of flooding thanks to its levee bank, which stands 1.2 metres above the 1974 flood level. Photograph: Diamantina shire council

To many city dwellers, becoming trapped for weeks where you live would be a terrifying prospect. Not so for the remote outback towns of Birdsville and Bedourie on the edge of the Munga-Thirri Simpson desert. Five weeks after flooding cut off roads into the towns, the residents’ biggest complaint is that the local store is down to two flavours of chips.

Since early February, the rural Queensland communities which border both the Northern Territory and South Australia, have only been accessible by plane. Flooding has turned the orange outback green-blue and, with further heavy rainfall and flooding forecast in the coming days, the dirt roads aren’t expected to open for another month.