Residents in the flood-stricken outback town of Oodnadatta remain stranded with limited supplies, despite South Australian Premier Steven Marshall saying the town is accessible via road.
A once-in-a-decade summer downpour has transformed the landscape around remote Oodnadatta, more than 1,000 km north of Adelaide and 200 km north of Coober Pedy in the South Australian outback.
It’s also cut off Australia’s hottest, driest town off from the rest of the country.
Pitjantjatjara woman, Carmen Amos, said the community felt forgotten, after the Royal Australian Air Force dropped 20 tonnes of supplies to Coober Pedy last week.
“We was the only people who missed out on that there because they got it in Coober Pedy a week ago but Oodnadatta just missed out,” Ms Amos said.
“He [Premier Steven Marshall] needs to send a plane out here with a lot of food to help us out here because we in a remote area.”
“There's not enough salad stuff, lettuce and veggies, so yeah, we need help with that.”
Local woman Carmen Amos says the town needs more help. Source: SBS News/Peta Doherty
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Mr Marshall said, “the SES looked at that issue, they found that the most important area to restock was Coober Pedy because Oodnadatta wasn't cut off from Coober Pedy”.
“People could still go down and that's the hub for supplies,” Premier Marshall said.
Jen Matthews, who with husband Peter Moore own the only shop in town, the iconic Pink Roadhouse, said it wasn’t that simple.
“The government just said that the shelves are full down there and we can go and get it, but we can't,” Ms Mathews said.
“Our roads are still closed and impassable, so there's no way we can get it unless they go by plane.”
Ms Mathews and her husband have resorted to using their own light aircraft to bring in basic stock from nearby Coober Pedy.
Providing for a town of 130 people - and a handful of remote stations - wasn’t easy when the only access was via plane, she said.
Some of the flooding at Oodnadatta. Source: SBS News/Peta Doherty
“Otherwise we wouldn't have had any fresh fruit and vegetables,” she said. “Nobody has come near us, nobody bothered about us, we feel we've been forgotten.”
On Monday, the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) scheduled a special detour to Oodnadatta to deliver critical supplies after its CEO heard about the town’s plight in the media.
Charlie Paterson, executive general manager of marketing and stakeholder relations at the RFDS, said his organisation was happy to help.
"Oodnadatta is one of the many isolated communities we care for 24/7 in outback South Australia..." he said.
"The Pink Roadhouse and the Oodnadatta community are members of our extended bush family."
Police officer in charge - Arabana, Yankunytjatjara, Adnyamathanha man Zaheer McKenzie, said the drop of 250 kilograms of fresh food was “life saving”.
“We’ll be out of fresh food for another week or two, with the road conditions as they are at the moment, and to have this service that the Flying Doctors has done today, is magnificent.”
“It’s going to really help the community with their stress levels after the last couple of weeks with the rain we’ve had.”
Melbourne resident Alison Tobias and her children (left to right) Ebony, 9, Angus, 7, and Lily, 11 have been stranded in Oodnadatta. Source: SBS News/Peta Doherty
Less than 24 hours later however, supplies have sold out.
“It’s all gone because people haven’t been able to stock up for two weeks,” said Mr Moore.
“We’ve sold fifteen dozen eggs, two boxes of lettuce and tomatoes, all the butter, 10 kilos each of raw sugar and flour and dog food - we are basically back to where we started.
“We’re not going to get a truck delivery until at least next Thursday."
On Tuesday afternoon, the dirt road to Mala opened to experienced four wheel drivers. It means a 900 kilometre return trip to the nearest supermarket in Coober Pedy.
With fuel costing $2.20 a litre and limited access to four wheel drives, it won’t help many in the mostly Indigenous community.
Angel Flight Australia has also pitched in to help, with pilots shopping in Adelaide to deliver around 60 kilograms of food to the isolated town last night.
Damage to part of the road to Coober Pedy, Source: SBS News/Peta Doherty
The charity airline collected a Melbourne family who have been stranded in Oodnadatta for 18 days after they decided to drive home from a visit to Alice Springs on back roads.
“We didn’t realise we’d been out of range for two days so we drove in and caught the perfect storm, and we did a gear box in our car and we’ve been stuck here,” said stranded traveller Alison Tobias.
But she and her three children were upbeat about the ordeal with Ms Tobias making a daily ritual of walking 12 kilometres each morning to check the water level.
Charity airline Angel Flight Australia dropped off around 60 kilograms of food to the town on Tuesday night. Source: Supplied
“It's been amazing, it's something we've all learned so much, we never realised there was so much culture, the desert, the travels, the people, it's completely eye opening."
Locals however are still calling for help.
They say the four major creek crossings between Oodnadatta and Coober Pedy are still flooded in close to a metre of water, and with significant damage to the road, it’s unclear when they’ll be reconnected to the rest of the country.
