Stunning pictures have emerged from outback Northern Territory of flooding across huge areas of the inland.
Former Tropical Cyclone Ellie has been stationary across central parts of the Territory to swamp the normally arid pastoral country with buckets of rain.
This amazing video was shot at Lake Nash Station on the Barkly Tableland on the NT/Queensland border
In the past week the 12,000 square kilometre Georgina Pastoral Company property has recorded 256mm at the main homestead.
The station's outstation, Argadargada, received 508mm, or about half a metre of rain.
The station is one of several owned by Peter and Jane Hughes with their headquarters at the family station Tierawoomba at Nebo, west of Mackay in Qld.
At Lake Nash, the flood levels are currently higher than big floods in 2019 and still rising.
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The Georgina River has broken away from its banks. In really wet years the Georgina can flow into Lake Eyre.
Five people were rescued by emergency services after a woman walked 35 kilometres through flooded dirt roads in the Lake Nash area on Boxing Day after their vehicle became bogged.
The group is believed to have been travelling from Mount Isa to the cattle station.
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The Hughes family run about 100,000 head of cattle across three stations Lake Nash, Caldervale near Tambo in central Queensland and Keeroongooloo via Windorah in the Channel Country.
And the rains might not be done with yet.
Some big weather is looming for the top of Australia over the next week.
Northern areas of Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory are all in the firing line of monsoon-induced storms.
Forecasters at the Bureau of Meteorology are reaching deep into their colour palette to produce some ominous charts.
Parts of the north are already sodden with flooded communities, road closures but also good news for pastoralists with massive falls across the crucial Barkly district.
Even the famously dusty Todd River in Alice Springs was flowing over Christmas.
Former Tropical Cyclone Ellie might yet spin back up into a cyclone again if it moves out over the seas as it "parks" in the Broome district in the next week.
Another tropical low is forming in the monsoon trough across north Queensland.
While northern Australia recorded its seventh wettest November on record in 2022, rainfall across northern Australia in December was very much below average.
TC Ellie changed all that when it made landfall west of Darwin just before Christmas.
Tropical weather systems are notoriously dynamic at this time of year and forecasters are loath to provide predictions of more than a few days out.
Some of the rain totals over the past week:
Darwin 93mm, Timber Creek 210mm, Alice Springs 50mm, Tennant Creek 140mm.
The bureau says ex-TC Ellie is still located over the Barkly district, is slowly moving to the northwest and is expected to move into WA today or tomorrow morning.
"Later this week the monsoon trough is expected to extend across the Gulf of Carpentaria.
"With the monsoon trough in the region the likelihood of a tropical low developing in the Gulf of Carpentaria increases.
"If a tropical low develops, from next week, there is a low risk that it will remain over water long enough to become a tropical cyclone," the bureau said.
Chris McLennan
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
