The CRANAplus offices will be closed from midday Tuesday 24 December and will reopen on Thursday 2 January 2025. The CRANAplus Bush Support Line is available throughout the holidays and can be contacted at any time on 1300 805 391.

Coping with the Kimberley Floods

14 Aug 2023

Senior Psychologist for the Bush Support Line, Dr Nicole Jeffery-Dawes, reflects on the emotional and professional challenges her community faced during the floods in the Kimberley earlier this year and shares what she’s learned about resilience, community and never taking a crisp lettuce for granted.

When I was asked to write my expe­ri­ences for this arti­cle, I didn’t think much of what I had been through, as I was only just out the oth­er side of things. How­ev­er, it pro­vid­ed me an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do some reflec­tive jour­nal­ing of sorts, and I realised just what the com­mu­ni­ty, myself includ­ed, had been through in a rel­a­tive­ly short peri­od of time. Writ­ing this was a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence, and has also allowed me to reflect on how I can bet­ter pre­pare myself for the com­ing wet season. 

I moved to the Kim­ber­ley for work over ten years ago, but Kununur­ra has become my home.

Lake Argyle spill­way, flow­ing for the first time in five years.

I fell in love with the land­scape and coun­try, the big sky, the water­falls and swim­ming holes, the peo­ple and the sense of com­mu­ni­ty. I’ve worked in very remote com­mu­ni­ties and expe­ri­enced their unique chal­lenges, and I’ve also been here in town for some sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges too: when the town flood­ed in 2014; as a vol­lie” I fought the bush­fires that almost took out town in 2018; and I was Plan­ning Lead in the local pan­dem­ic response in ear­ly 2020 and watched as State and Local Gov­ern­ment Area bor­ders shut, and every­one stayed at home to pro­tect one anoth­er. And, pret­ty much every year with­out fail, the Great North­ern High­way will get cut off between here and Perth dur­ing some stage of the wet sea­son due to flood­ing, and they can’t get fresh food to us for a week or so. Despite all of these chal­lenges, we plan as best we can. We pull togeth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty and know it won’t last for­ev­er, and that we can get through this.

Image: DFES. Noonkan­bah evacuation/​relocation.

How­ev­er, this year seemed dif­fer­ent. Start­ing on the 30th of Decem­ber 2022, the rem­nants of ex-Trop­i­cal Cyclone Ellie hung around the Kim­ber­ley and dumped tor­ren­tial rain across north­ern West­ern Aus­tralia. This caused the Fitzroy Riv­er to swell to record highs, sweep­ing away the instru­ments used to mea­sure the flood height, and they observed some of the high­est flow rates ever in an Aus­tralian riv­er. Mul­ti­ple bridges and roads were impass­able, and many of the region’s remote Com­mu­ni­ties were either inun­dat­ed or cut off and required emer­gency evacuations. 

The road between Broome and Der­by had washed away in kilo­me­tre-long stretch­es and need­ed to be rebuilt. How­ev­er, it wasn’t until around the 9th of Jan­u­ary 2023 that it became appar­ent that the Fitzroy Riv­er bridge was so severe­ly dam­aged as to be deemed unus­able. This bridge is part of the only sealed road that links the East Kim­ber­ley to any­where else in WA, includ­ing Perth, where our food comes from.

Due to strict quar­an­tine rules in WA, we can’t bring any fresh pro­duce into the state. Nor can we grow much up here at this time of year, due to weath­er and insects that eat every­thing. Like our mail, our fresh pro­duce goes via Perth to be sort­ed and distributed.

Shoal Air pilot, Alex, cap­tured these images of Fitzroy Cross­ing while sup­port­ing Hori­zon Pow­er con­trac­tors to keep the pow­er sta­tion and net­work running.

With the bridge out of action, the only alter­na­tive route was along the Nullar­bor, up the Stu­art High­way in the cen­tre, and turn left at Kather­ine. This adds about 2000 km to the already 3000 km trip, but after a few weeks of no fresh food, the trucks start­ed arriving. 

Although the fresh pro­duce, dairy and frozen food range in our only major chain super­mar­ket were extreme­ly lim­it­ed (around one-tenth of the nor­mal range), we made do as best we could. Our local inde­pen­dent super­mar­ket reviewed their sup­ply chain and brought in fresh food from Perth by boat. We sup­port­ed them when they could meet the increased demand. 

The local butch­er also did his best, but this wasn’t a great help for veg­e­tar­i­ans. I learnt I could order fruit and veg­eta­bles through an inde­pen­dent buy­er in Perth and have it trucked up, so that’s what I did: but I only got the chance to put the one order in.

The new inter­net hard­ware I had ordered at the end of Jan­u­ary with the hope of improv­ing and main­tain­ing my video con­nec­tion for work was still nowhere to be seen in the post at the end of March.

In anoth­er turn of events in ear­ly March, both the Tim­ber Creek and the Vic­to­ria Riv­er in the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry (NT) flood­ed and cut off the only oth­er access road in the sup­ply route to the East Kim­ber­ley, essen­tial­ly turn­ing us into an island. We could no longer get fresh food, let alone mail and oth­er stock and sup­plies to businesses.

Avi­a­tion fuel is also trucked in, so there was insuf­fi­cient fuel for air­craft to fly from Perth as they couldn’t ade­quate­ly refu­el. Only one com­mer­cial air­line flies between Dar­win and Kununur­ra, and even dur­ing a typ­i­cal­ly errat­ic wet sea­son, you can’t always depend on catch­ing a flight.

As a Com­mu­ni­ty, we did as we nor­mal­ly do dur­ing chal­leng­ing times like this: we band­ed togeth­er, used humour where we could, swapped and shared the food we did have with our fam­i­ly and friends, and had a darn good rant to one another.

Peo­ple put up fun­ny posts on the local Face­book Com­mu­ni­ty Notice­board, try­ing to sell a piece of suss-look­ing broc­coli to the high­est bid­der and the like. The ban­ter in the com­ments sec­tions was pure com­e­dy gold.

The local restau­rants were inven­tive with their menus and the pro­duce they had avail­able to them, with one estab­lish­ment even includ­ing a menu spe­cial of an East Kim­ber­ley Sal­ad” made up of half-mouldy let­tuce and toma­to with a $50 price tag.

Image: DFES. Dam­aged road lead­ing to Fitzroy Bridge, Jan­u­ary 2023.

We were reg­u­lar­ly remind­ed through media and word of mouth of those who lost so much in the recent flood­ing and were grate­ful we still had our homes, our fam­i­lies togeth­er, and our rel­a­tive com­forts. But after over two months of mak­ing do’ and now this most recent chal­lenge of being com­plete­ly cut off and short on food, cracks were start­ing to show.

Giv­en the past few years’ chal­lenges, peo­ple were becom­ing tired of con­stant­ly try­ing to main­tain a cheery out­look and do with­out: resilience was at an all-time low. Peo­ple were quick to snap at one anoth­er, becom­ing eas­i­ly irri­ta­ble, and tem­pers were quick to flare.

It was real­ly dis­heart­en­ing to go to the super­mar­ket and con­stant­ly see noth­ing but bare shelves in the meat, dairy and pro­duce sec­tions as you walked through the doors.

The uncer­tain­ty of not know­ing if the bridge would still be there in the NT after the water reced­ed also added to people’s worry.

It was over a week after we were cut off that we heard that the Gov­ern­ment was enlist­ing the assis­tance of the ADF to fly in food for us and that barges loaded with trucks of pro­duce would arrive in the next three to four days. This news excit­ed every­one, boost­ed their spir­its and gave them some­thing to look for­ward to. The local port work­ers built a land­ing plat­form for the barges, to code, in a day! How­ev­er, when the plane arrived, it was car­ry­ing dry goods, which was less of an issue as our super­mar­kets keep a stock­pile for poten­tial flood­ing and road clo­sures. What we need­ed most was fresh food. This was a dis­ap­point­ment for everyone.

This is where self-com­pas­sion came in. Yep, things were look­ing pret­ty grim right about now. We were upset that items that we had ordered weeks, if not months ago, to help make life a lit­tle more com­fort­able in this remote set­ting, weren’t arriv­ing by mail. We acknowl­edged this, and also that we were tired of try­ing to meet our own and our family’s food and nutri­tion­al require­ments. We gave our­selves per­mis­sion to feel the dis­ap­point­ment we expe­ri­enced. We gave our­selves space and allo­cat­ed time to go there: to express our feel­ings and cry, scream, what­ev­er was need­ed to let the frus­tra­tions out. We allowed our­selves to go there but also knew we couldn’t live in that space.

So, we dust­ed our­selves off, pulled up our big-per­son pants, and remind­ed each oth­er and our­selves of all the things we did have and were grate­ful for.

We weren’t starv­ing, only fac­ing lim­it­ed options. We swapped increas­ing­ly cre­ative recipes that had ever-dimin­ish­ing ingre­di­ent lists. We used humour at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. We were remind­ed by the old timers’ of more chal­leng­ing times when they need­ed to get their orders into the store by Sep­tem­ber as there were no deliv­er­ies at all, includ­ing any (let alone fresh) food or mail, until the fol­low­ing year at the end of the wet sea­son around March. 

Some chil­dren were giv­en a firm but hon­est talk­ing-to about adjust­ing their expec­ta­tions dur­ing these times. We com­pared our­selves to oth­er areas in the world, includ­ing those at war. We were remind­ed that we had our health, safe­ty, food to eat, homes to go to, and good friends to lean on.

New seedlings plant­ed in April are mak­ing up the large and hope­ful­ly pro­duc­tive vege patch.

We were, in fact, so for­tu­nate and this lat­est, albeit pro­longed chal­lenge of no access to fresh food, lim­it­ed goods and ser­vices in oth­er shops (I had ordered new tyres at the start of Decem­ber), no flights to Perth and no mail, only served as a reminder about the lit­tle we need to sur­vive and what real­ly is impor­tant in life.

Iron­i­cal­ly, fresh food arrived by barge and by plane on the same day the high­way reopened and the trucks could get through. It was also like Christ­mas when the mail start­ed arriv­ing at the post office! But this chal­leng­ing time has remind­ed us to be grate­ful for what we have and not to take things for grant­ed. Things still aren’t back to nor­mal’, and won’t be for months, if not years until the bridge is built, but that’s okay. I’ve got my vege gar­den up and run­ning for this year and seem to be grow­ing and pre­serv­ing enough to feed half the town.

But I know that come the next wet sea­son, our food secu­ri­ty will be com­pro­mised again for months, and I want health­i­er options to choose from rather than food full of chem­i­cal preser­v­a­tives. Dur­ing this dry sea­son, we’ve been buy­ing and putting away a few non-per­ish­able items into the wet sea­son pantry’ so that we won’t have to do a big (and expen­sive) shop lat­er in the year. And now, when we have a yarn with oth­ers, we laugh about it all and then swap pro­duce and ideas about stor­age.

Togeth­er, we can get through anything.

Inter­est­ed in learn­ing about wet-weath­­er dis­eases? Read our sto­ries on Melioi­do­sis and Japan­ese encephali­tis virus.