Australia’s driest town swamped amid deadly storm
Torrential rain, severe storms and dangerous floods continue to cause havoc, leading to the death of a motorcyclist who was swept away in a creek.
Source: Bureau of Meteorology
It’s supposed to be the driest town in Australia, but Oodnadatta has been left a sea of buckets and tarps after being hit in an inland big wet that claimed the life of one man.
The 47-year-old motorbike rider went missing after trying to cross a flooded creek at Eurelia, in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges on Sunday morning.
His body was later recovered as severe weather warnings and flash flooding alerts remain across the region and for much of Australia’s inland south-east.
The deluge exposed the lack of weather proofing at the historic Pink Roadhouse, which is in SA’s arid north on the famous Oodnadatta Track.
The dirt car park out front of the Oodnadatta food stop was a muddy quagmire by Sunday. Locals report they haven’t seen such rain since the 1980s.
Nicole Castagnaro’s Sunday shift was spent emptying the 30-plus buckets and containers dotted throughout the store as the rain kept falling and the roof kept leaking.
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“There’s no one around at all,” she said.
“The roads are closed, we’re running out of food, and if the trucks can’t get through, we’ll be stuck eating baked beans for the foreseeable future.”
Oodnadatta had nearly 18 millimetres of rain overnight into Sunday – or more than 10 per cent of its average annual rainfall of 171 millimetres.
It’s been so long since the tracks flooded, most locals have no idea what happens next if food can’t be delivered to the tiny town and its population of 102.
“We can’t live on just beans, but I don’t know if the military will airlift supplies – I guess we’ll find out,” Castagnaro said.
There’s no immediate end in sight to the huge storm system as it passes through central Australia, bringing widespread downfalls and flash flooding.
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Millions were still bracing for deluges on Sunday night and Monday morning amid severe weather warnings for SA’s east and much of western Victoria and NSW.
The outback SA mining town of Coober Pedy also copped an unexpected drenching, getting nearly 16 millimetres of rain during the night.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Dean Narramore said heavy rain, thunderstorms and flooding were expected to continue until at least Monday night.
“While for some areas, we’ve seen welcome agricultural impacts from this widespread rainfall, the additional rainfall could start causing some issues,” he said.
After just 3.6 millimetres of rain so far in 2026, Adelaide was told to expect falls of up to 50 millimetres on Sunday, but the heavy downpours instead fell further north.
Yunta, in the outback about 300 kilometres north-east of the SA capital, got 129 millimetres of rain, while rural centres such as Mildura in north-west Victoria were also inundated.
The downpour came as a shock to many in SA after forecasters tipped the state’s first dry summer since 2019, the eighth since records began.
Meteorologists have described the slow-moving tropical low – which sat over the Simpson Desert in the south-east Northern Territory for a week – as highly unusual.
For many farmers, some rain is welcome but forecasters warn that benefits will turn to risk as totals push beyond 50 millimetres.
The low is expected to weaken as it moves east, although consistent falls have already prompted warnings of increased shark activity in Sydney Harbour and estuaries along the NSW coast after heavy rain.
Rich run-off can attract baitfish and, in turn, sharks, triggering attacks such as the spate in January that left one Sydney schoolboy dead.
-with AAP
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