Water on the Highway: Barkly in Flood

Adventuring Pals share their incredible experience charting the Barkly, amid receding floods

WORDS AND PHOTOS ELVIN AND ESHLYN PAL

Recently we had in plan a big and adventurous road trip from Hervey Bay through outback Queensland and into the Red Center. It was a school holiday trip with some friends, and because of this, we had a jam packed schedule visiting iconic sites in Emerald, Longreach and Winton, before crossing over to explore Alice Springs, Uluru and Coober Pedy.

The plans were in place well in advance and mostly booked in and paid for to make things easier for the trip. The only problem was, Mother Nature. After a tremendous amount of rain caused flooding and damaged roads, it was looking like it may not be possible for us to make our bookings in the time frame we had set up. Our biggest dilemma was the closure of a 190km section of the Barkly Highway between Barkly Roadhouse and where it meets the Stuart Highway, at Threeways Roadhouse. For those who have travelled this route may realise that a detour in this section of the country is usually a few hundred, or even thousands of or even thousands of kilometres.

One-Way Traffic

It was still weeks before our trip when all this was happening, so we were hoping for the best and assuming that the roads should be open by the time we get there as the weather had well and truly cleared up. When the time came for our trip, the highway was only partially open. In the mornings the road was open for traffic to cross from west to east, and in the afternoons it was open for traffic going east to west. After a week of holidaying in the Queensland outback we had actually carelessly forgotten about this very important information and we were only reminded of the situation on the day we had planned to cross the highway. Luckily this reminder came early in the day by other travellers that had crossed this route the previous day and we got some very helpful information from them about the condition of the roads ahead. We had to get a move on, and only stopped for the absolute necessities, such as diesel and toilet breaks. After a few hours of travelling and crossing the border where we actually gained half an hour, we managed to make the road block with just half an hour to spare before it was closed! Boy that was close!

“With a guarantee of no oncoming traffic, we could safely negotiate the various water crossings”

A Wild Experience

Once we took a breath of relief from making the deadline, we realised just what an amazing experience we were having. There was a lot of water all around us. Not deep enough to be of any concern, as long as we slowed down enough. The excitement of this adventurous drive through the flooded highway was all the more special, the flood waters have brought with it an amazing array of wildlife that would not normally be seen along this highway. It was teeming with bird life, we could see fish actually crossing the road and turtles swimming beside the highway! The water was flowing with rapids seen in the sections beside the road. To think it had been like this for weeks was incredible with this amount of water still flowing through! With a guarantee of no oncoming traffic, we could safely negotiate the various water crossings, choosing the best lines to avoid damaged sections of highway and deeper sections of water. Once we got safely on the other side of the flood ways we realised that we are unlikely to experience this type of highway driving again anytime soon.