Severe Flooding in Australia Closes Major Highway, Stranding Remote Gold Mine Workers

Flooding after heavy rain has made a major highway in Australia impassable. From the beginning of March the Great Central Road closed. Truck drivers delivering a remote gold mine from the western city of Perth now have to travel more than 4,000 kilometers to reach the mine.

The closure is outThe highway that runs from Laverton in Western Australia to Yulara in the Northern Territory is expected to last until the end of May.

At the height of the floods, the water on the road was more than a meter high and the Aboriginal community was also cut off from the outside world. They were delivered by air.

It is not only the Great Central Road that has been badly damaged by the floods. Thousands of kilometers of other roads in the region have also been damaged, The Australian reports ABC News. Experts are assessing the damage. Local authorities fear that the amount could rise to 100 million Australian dollars (more than 60 million euros).

At the Gruyère gold mine, 200 kilometers north of Laverton, 140 millimeters of rain fell in two weeks. That’s half of what falls on average in a year. Due to the flood, it was not possible to provide fuel and supplies. As a result, work at the mine and the associated factory came to a temporary halt.

The mine is from Perth, which is located on the western side of Australia on the Indian Ocean. That’s usually a journey of about a thousand kilometers. Now the trucks go through South Australia and the Northern Territory, a journey of around 4,600 kilometres. To give you an idea of ​​how far that is: the continent of Australia is about 4,000 kilometers wide.

So there is a lot of damage to roads and bridges. The local authorities are receiving money from the national disaster fund to repair the damage.

Australia has had to deal with floods and heavy rain more often in recent months. For example, there were problems in the state of Victoria, but also in Sydney because of a very wet summer.