‘You’re ringing an old lady in outback Queensland for life advice’: travellers worried about floods skip AI and pick up the phone

A deluge of water left the normally dry and dusty town of Winton a kind of island emerging from Queensland’s inundated western plains. Photograph: Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History

Over the weekend, Narelle Hetherington got a call from a couple planning a more than 1,000km trip across Queensland. The drive would see them pass through Winton, where Hetherington runs a motel – the couple wanted a room.

“I’m like, ‘mate, the roads are all cut off out here’,” Hetherington says.