Residents of the storied town of Oodnadatta have been relying on the famous Pink Roadhouse pub for survival, as flood waters cut the town off from supplies and help is sparse.
Oodnadatta is a remote outback town nearly 900 kilometres north of Adelaide and home to a community of 130 people.
In recent weeks, huge areas in the typically parched South Australian outback have been inundated with record rainfall, washing away roads and creating an island of the town.
Currently the only access is by air, with roads impassable in all directions, leaving the town and all inside nowhere to get food and supplies.
Peter Moore, owner of the town’s iconic pub, the Pink Roadhouse, has been flying his light plane to fetch goods for the locals. But he reports everything is snapped up before he even unloads the plane and says a town can’t be run “out of the back of a light aircraft”.
The state government has recently made a drop of food and supplies to Coober Pedy, around 200 kilometres to the south, but as has happened before, locals lament Oodnadatta has again been overlooked.
Authorities warn outback floods can have major health consequences for towns in this predicament; mosquito-borne diseases become a concern, and a counter-intuitive lack of access to clean water.
Not usually a consideration in metropolitan regions, food insecurity and malnutrition can also be a genuine problem in regional and remote communities, further highlighted in times of crisis.