{"id":637893,"date":"2026-03-07T04:41:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T04:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/637893\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T04:41:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T04:41:31","slug":"remote-nt-communities-of-daly-river-palumpa-evacuated-as-flood-threat-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/637893\/","title":{"rendered":"Remote NT communities of Daly River, Palumpa evacuated as flood threat continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of remote residents are being evacuated from their small communities by air this weekend, as flooding inundates parts of the Northern Territory.<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has a number of flood warnings in place, including an emergency alert for major flooding in Katherine<\/a> and a major flood warning for the Daly River.<\/p>\n

Katherine ‘under threat’ as ‘major flood’ risk to remain until Sunday<\/a><\/p>\n

Residents in Katherine woke up to find their main street had been submerged by flooding despite advice from authorities yesterday that the centre of town wouldn’t be inundated.<\/p>\n

The weather bureau said major flooding is expected at the Daly River Police Station from this evening, with levels expected to reach 14.5 metres on Sunday.<\/p>\n

BOM forecaster Shenagh Gamble said the Daly River catchment had seen “heavy rainfall totals” since Friday morning, as floodwaters continued to “rise quite rapidly”.<\/p>\n

This morning, she said Daly River Police Station \u2014 which became “completely isolated” by a separate flood event, less than a month ago<\/a> \u2014 recorded 161 millimetres of rain in 24 hours.<\/p>\n

By 1:15pm this afternoon, Daly River had risen to 13.61m.<\/p>\n

“We do expect the Daly River at the community of Nauiyu to reach major flooding,” Ms Gamble said.<\/p>\n

“So it will pass 14 metres this afternoon, and we also expect that river to continue rising through the major flood level.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Palumpa, or Nganmarriyanga, a separate remote NT community, has also been hit with emergency-level flooding.<\/p>\n

\"Floodwaters<\/p>\n

Emergency evacuation orders have been issued for Palumpa, also known as Nganmarriyanga. (Supplied: Charlotte Amor)<\/p>\n

The two remote Aboriginal communities, Palumpa (Nganmarriyanga) and Daly River (Nauiyu), are both under emergency evacuation orders.<\/p>\n

NT Police Incident Controller Shaun Gill said a billabong cuts though the middle of Palumpa, which impacted emergency planning.<\/p>\n

“There’s two sides of the town, one side is higher than the other,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The community was evacuated to the high side because that’s where we have a normal-weather airstrip, and that was part of our evacuation plan.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Floodwaters<\/p>\n

Beswick was among the remote NT communities hit by heavy rains overnight. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Acting NT Police Commissioner Travis Wurst said some Palumpa residents had been trapped by flooding before they could evacuate to the airstrip on higher ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We are going to use a helicopter to do some winching, to recover the last few folks out of that community,” he said.<\/p>\n

He confirmed a total of 10 adults would be winched from varying places within the community’s lower-end.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

Travis Wurst, Lia Finocchiaro and Shenagh Gamble gave an update on the weather this afternoon. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)<\/p>\n

Acting Commissioner Wurst said the speed of Daly River’s rising levels presented a “rapid and emerging situation” that forced authorities “to move and act quickly also”.<\/p>\n

Eight weather stations in the Top End, including Nauiyu’s police station, recorded more than 100 millimetres of rain in the 24 hours to 9am this morning.<\/p>\nWeather stationTotal recorded<\/tr>\n\nHayward Creek<\/td>\n130.4mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nDaly River Police Station<\/td>\n161.5mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nMount Nancar<\/td>\n162.5<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nDouglas River Research Farm<\/td>\n101.4mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nBeeboom Crossing<\/td>\n142mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nTheyona Station<\/td>\n180mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nFish River<\/td>\n127.6mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nDorisvale Crossing<\/td>\n121.5mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

A further 14 stations, mainly between the Daly region and Darwin, recorded more than 50 millimetres\u00a0over the day.<\/p>\n

Evacuations delayed by weather<\/p>\n

Acting Commissioner Wurst said the evacuations, first mentioned by NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro yesterday, had been delayed until today.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

“The weather was such that it prevented us using any assets available to commence those evacuations,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The community has been aware of that all along, we’ve kept that information flowing into the community.<\/p>\n

“We’ll have everyone out today, the weather is holding for the time being.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s the second time this year Daly River has been evacuated<\/a> to the Darwin showgrounds over flooding concerns, with BOM forecasting waters will rise further than the previous event’s anticipated peak of 14.5 metres.<\/p>\n

Residents of remote NT community return home<\/a><\/p>\n

Flood evacuees from the remote community of Nauiyu, also known as Daly River, have returned to their homes to survey flood damage after two weeks hunkered down in Darwin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms Gamble said “extraordinary rainfall” recorded across the catchment would keep flowing downstream towards Nauiyu, so Daly River was predicted to “continue rising over the next week”.<\/p>\n

“We do expect flood levels of the Daly River community to far exceed previous flood levels,” she said.<\/p>\n

Commander Gill this morning confirmed Daly River evacuees would be taken to Foskey Pavilion over the weekend.<\/p>\n

“We are currently organising a large-scale helicopter retrieval of approximately 400 people from the community,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said Palumpa was also currently being evacuated by air, and would shelter at the Marrara stadium in suburban Darwin.<\/p>\n

\"Brown<\/p>\n

Palumpa is being evacuated by air this weekend. (Supplied: Charlotte Amor)<\/p>\n

“There’s six fixed-wing aircraft that are moving approximately 200 people to Darwin,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Our number one priority is the preservation of life \u2014 by moving people early, we are reducing the risk to the community and to our emergency personnel.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mrs Finocchiaro addressed the media just before 1pm today, and confirmed 34 Palumpa locals were in Darwin so far.<\/p>\n

“That’s a community of 200, so we’ve got our work cut out for us today,” she said.<\/p>\n

She said Daly River’s second flood evacuation in the space of a month would be “really difficult for that community”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

NT Police Commissioner Travis Wurst says preservation of life is the top priority. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)<\/p>\n

“They’ve just been repatriated back home and are now facing significant flooding again,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I just really want to thank all of our emergency services, who’ve done an exceptional job.”<\/p>\n

Flood risk easing elsewhere<\/p>\n

An emergency warning for major flooding at Beswick, also known as Wugularr, was also issued last night.<\/p>\n

Waterhouse River at Beswick Bridge peaked at more than 9 metres yesterday, with river levels now falling, but the warning remains active.<\/p>\n

\"Floodwaters<\/p>\n

Flooding in Beswick is now easing. (Supplied: Bush-Blanasi family)<\/p>\n

BOM predicts Adelaide River will also see further rainfall in the coming days, but said “flooding is no longer expected” to hit the town’s river.<\/p>\n

Ms Gamble this morning confirmed a severe weather warning for the Top End had been cancelled, but the region was likely still in for a wet weekend.<\/p>\n

“This means that the widespread heavier rainfalls, that we have seen over the past 48 hours, are backing of,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

she said.<\/p>\n

“The heavier falls are expected to be off-shore and closer to the coast, which brings them away from those large catchments.<\/p>\n

“We do still have this monsoon trough across the base of the Top End, with an embedded low, and so we can still expect to see severe thunderstorms with higher totals.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of remote residents are being evacuated from their small communities by air this weekend, as flooding inundates…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":637894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,246469,271687,271689,271688,19558,16217,246471,37826,8580,271686,50,13263,271685,203890,7160],"class_list":["post-637893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-australia","tag-daly-river","tag-daly-river-flood","tag-daly-river-flooding","tag-daly-river-height","tag-emergency-evacuation","tag-flood","tag-flood-evacuation","tag-flood-risk","tag-flooding","tag-nauiyu","tag-news","tag-nt","tag-palumpa","tag-remote-nt","tag-weather-forecast"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116186060507334831","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}