Stranded travellers between Pascoe and Wenlock Rivers near Lockhart hit by phone outage

Authorities are working on “instinct” to provide supplies to travellers who have been stranded in the Cape for almost two weeks, as an “annual” phone outage hampers recovery efforts.

UPDATE: According to Telstra, services at the remote Cape York community of Lockhart River were restored earlier today.

“The recent torrential rain in the far north affected the power supply to our site at Lockhart River, bringing down mobile and landline services in the region for the past few days,” Telstra regional general manager Rachel Cliffe said.

“The weather has also cut off roads and our technician choppered to and from the site to conduct repairs.

“No telecommunications network is immune to service disruption, especially during torrential weather and power outages, and while we do everything we can to build resiliency and restore services quickly, we encourage people to look at what back up options are available for connectivity and EFTPOS. This includes the nbn and other satellite providers.”

EARLIER: A remote Cape York community is furious following a communication network failure labelled as an “annual event” as travellers stranded almost two weeks due to floods await assistance.

Three groups of travellers visiting the Portlands Rd area north of Lockhart River have been trapped since April 14 in between the Pascoe and Wenlock rivers with a pregnant woman flown out on Thursday.

And, another four vehicles of local Lockhart River community members remain trapped also near the Pascoe River..

Speaking from Cairns on Wednesday, Lockhart River Mayor Wayne Butcher said this was the second week this year of no mobile phones, no data and no communication.

“We are trying to work out how to get more food to them, that’s the only concern but there are no comms in Lockhart so it’s hard to do anything at the moment,” Cr Butcher said.

“We can’t run our day-to-day business, we can’t run the Shire, we can’t call for an ambulance,” he said.

“This has been going on every year for the past ten years I’ve been the Mayor, we’ve seen promise after promise to fix the problem but no commitment to getting the job done.

“Every year we send out the same message – from Cairns, because we can’t send it from there – and every year we get the same promises, especially in an election year, but nothing changes.

“And the dangerous thing about it is it happens in our wet season, our cyclone season, we’ve had people stranded between rivers for more than ten days now but the only way we can find them is to send out a helicopter.

File photo: Adventurer Frank Thompson tows caravan across flooded Wenlock River in 1997.

“So we’ve had to drop off food and medical supplies but we’re just doing it on instinct, because we’ve had no communication at all since last weekend, people have to be missed before we even know they are missing.”

It wasn’t the first time the shire had gone without basic services, after losing electricity for multiple days and having no fuel for two weeks, in April last year.

And in February last year Cr Butcher said after reporting a mobile network outage, Telstra provided an estimated repair time of 13 days.

Three years prior, Lockhart River went six weeks without communication after a lightning strike took out a phone tower.

“This has been an annual event, and always at the most dangerous time of year,” Cr Butcher said.

“So obviously Telstra knows about it, the Federal Government knows about it, and we just keep knocking on their door, reminding them we’re having the same recurrence of events here, every year.

“It is going to cost someone their life, or lives, one day and it’s honestly a wonder it hasn’t happened already, it feels like it’s only a matter of time.”

“It’s a technical issue, it’s fixable and it needs to be fixed.”

Originally published as Stranded travellers between Pascoe and Wenlock Rivers near Lockhart hit by phone outage