Birdsville and Bedourie locals are used to being trapped by flooding – but if they run out of Tim Tams and chocolate, ‘that’s a big problem’
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To many city dwellers, becoming trapped for weeks where you live would be a terrifying prospect. Not so for the remote outback towns of Birdsville and Bedourie on the edge of the Munga-Thirri Simpson desert. Five weeks after flooding cut off roads into the towns, the residents’ biggest complaint is that the local store is down to two flavours of chips.
Since early February, the rural Queensland communities which border both the Northern Territory and South Australia, have only been accessible by plane. Flooding has turned the orange outback green-blue and, with further heavy rainfall and flooding forecast in the coming days, the dirt roads aren’t expected to open for another month.