Borroloola residents repatriated to flood-hit home, recovery under way

Borroloola residents will be seeing their flood-affected homes for the first time as hundreds are repatriated following Cyclone Megan smashing through.

Imagery of Borroloola residents being evacuated from their flood-hit town on an ADF aircraft in March.

Evacuees will be seeing their flood-affected homes for the first time since their town was hit by devastating floods earlier this month.

At the weekend, about 280 evacuees in Darwin journeyed by bus and plane to Borroloola 10 days after their town was hit by severe weather in the wake of Cyclone Megan.

Three buses left Darwin on Friday night, each carrying about 50 passengers.

On Saturday, two Air North charter flights carried 150 people – mostly elderly, medically vulnerably and very young children, to MacArthur River mine where they were transferred onto buses for a short drive to Borroloola.

Incident Controller Neil Hayes revealed 60 evacuees elected to remain behind.

“The evacuees were very glad to be going home – a number of evacuees who were scheduled to fly home chose to go by bus last night, which we were able to accommodate,” he said.

“There remain about 60 evacuees who did not take advantage of the transport home – they are now responsible for making their own arrangements and are encouraged to contact the Larrakia Nation Return to Country program.”

Superintendent Neil Hayes of Alice Springs Police.

Mr Hayes said the new objective was to return Borroloola to “business as usual”.

“With the return of the evacuees to their home community, the response phase to Tropical Low 09U – Cyclone Megan is over and we move to the recovery phase to fully restore the community to ‘business as usual’,” he said.

“Hundreds of personnel from all tiers of government, non-government organisations, the private sector and volunteers have been working around the clock to protect the Territory since Cyclone Megan started to develop three weeks ago.”