Lyons River floods - Mt Augustus Station goes under

Submitted: Friday, Feb 14, 2020 at 21:32

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Mount Augustus Outback Tourist Resort

Located at the Mt Augustus station. This station-operated private caravan park and camping facility caters for the needs of tourists visiting Mt Augustus.

Ron N

The remnants of Cyclone Damien have brought extensive rainfall events to the Southern Pilbara and Upper Gascoyne regions.

The Lyons River has reached major flood level, and due to a lack of river height recordings upstream from Mt Augustus, the owners of the Station were "caught napping", and received no official warning that the Lyons River was going to break its banks, with a major flood event.

The Station and all the buildings have been seriously inundated, and a lot of equipment is under water.
The flood losses to the station owners will be substantial.

On the upside, I'd be pretty confident the coming tourist season in the region will be a worthy one, with water and greenery everywhere.

Flooding Mt Augustus Station - Feb 2020

In other Eastern Murchison news, two men had to be rescued by chopper from the roof of their flooded Jeep, near Meekatharra.

Two men rescued from roof of Jeep near Meekatharra

Cheers, Ron.

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Reply By: Member - J&A&KK - Saturday, Feb 15, 2020 at 01:29

Saturday, Feb 15, 2020 at 01:29

Hi Ron

Outback storms can cause flash flooding. That we know.

I have been following the BOM flood warnings for the Pilbara and Gascoyne for some days now. They have been predicting flooding in the Lyons ( the river that flooded Mt Augustus Station) and Gascoyne.

However when looking at the rainfall, as published on the BOM weather stations, you wonder where the floods will come from. When looking at the river levels, as published by the BOM river level stations, they have all shown flat lines for the past week.

Net result. There are far too few met stations in this outback WA country to be useful for flood warnings. One river level station on the Murchison in a location where it’s in the gorge country and useful to no one!

Compared to outback QLD and NSW we, here in WA, are very poor cousins. However that said, many of our outback rivers can be dry or low on water for years. Plus there are few people affected when they do burst their banks.

Feel sorry for the Mt Augustus mob. They should have known to buy a float plane.

Cheers John

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