Katherine’s mayor has warned locals to be wary of flooding flooding the city after a crocodile was spotted at the city’s AFL oval, while residents are warned to boil water amid the record deluge.
As rain and storms continued to soak the Top End on Monday, the Bureau of Meteorology issued major flood warnings for thousands of areas near the Katherine, Daly and Georgina rivers and Eyre Creek, with a flood watch covering almost a dozen river catchments.
The Daly River, which runs 354 kilometers to the mouth of the Timor Sea, was still rising after having passed its major flood level following “extremely heavy rainfall”, meteorologist Angus Hines said.
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The river was expected to peak at around 15.3 meters or more – the highest level since 1998 – around Wednesday, compared with 10 meters last Monday, and flooding is likely to persist for more than a week.
The Katherine River was slowly receding on Monday morning, having peaked at 19.2 meters before midnight on Saturday (its highest level since 1998) with streets and low-lying parts of the community flooded.
Mayor Joanna Holden, of Katherine City Council, said she had never seen so many freshwater and saltwater crocodiles in local floodwaters before.
“There was actually a saltwater crocodile at the AFL oval last night,” he said. “It just adds another element of danger to the whole cleanup.”
On Sunday, NT residents were warned to stay away from flooding due to the risk of sewage overflows and crocodiles.
“There are crocodiles everywhere… please don’t go in the water,” NT Acting Incident Control Commander Shaun Gill said on Sunday morning.
Hundreds of people in the flood-affected communities of Palumpa, Jilkiminggan and Nauiyu (Daly River) have been fully evacuated to Darwin, according to SecureNT, with at least seven schools closed in Katherine and five closed in the Big Rivers region until Monday.
The NT health department also issued “boil water” alerts to communities including Katherine, Wugularr (Beswick), Tindal, Palumpa and Nauiyu (Daly River), advising people to use boiled or bottled water for drinking, preparing baby food or formula or brushing teeth.
Major transport routes, including the Stuart, Victoria, Roper and Buchanan Highways and the Central Arnhem Road, remained closed in parts due to flooding.
Dheran Young, the local member for Daly in the NT, represents people from large swaths of remote and rugged territory, an area roughly the size of Tasmania.
While many residents were accustomed to heavy rains cutting off roads and isolating communities for months during the rainy season, he said many were concerned and frustrated by the official response to the disaster, which included the evacuation of two communities, Daly River and Palumpa, over the weekend.
“It’s been a difficult time for residents. A lot of people have been calling me because of the anxiety they feel about having to leave their community and come to Darwin, but also the relief they feel now to be out,” Young said.
Since many residents are vulnerable, he feared access to essential goods such as food and medicine was at risk.
“They are isolated and isolated and in very remote locations,” Young said.
The ABC has reported that rail and road routes have reopened to supply food across the Top End.
Fleur Parry, artistic director of Djilpin Arts Aboriginal Corporation, had been attempting to return to Katherine from Darwin when heavy rain, flooding and road closures turned a normally easy journey into a more than five-hour ordeal.
“There was going to be a helicopter, but then a storm came up, so the helicopter couldn’t leave. So I got them to take me as close to the city as I could, but that was a police block,” he said. The police took Parry home.
In the past five days, 571.5mm has fallen at the Daly River police station, Hines said, and weather stations in the central and western parts of the Top End saw widespread totals of 100 to 200mm. Approximately 241mm of rain fell in five days at the Katherine Bridge weather station.
Hines said a pair of tropical low pressure systems had moved into the Top End and much of Queensland, bringing “quite a hit of tropical moisture”, with heavy rain and flooding.
It was an “unusually wet week, even for the Territory’s rainy season,” Hines said. Some five-day rainfall totals are likely to be March records, he said, with the possibility that more rain could cause new river rises or prolonged flooding.
“Unfortunately, at this time of year, there is no dry forecast for the foreseeable future,” Hines said, and the rainy season will continue until the end of April.
A flood alert was also in place for most of Queensland, affecting more than 20 river catchments, with moderate to heavy rainfall in saturated catchments on the Central Coast and parts of Capricornia and Wide Bay.
Major flood warnings have been issued for the Stuart, Boyne, Mary, Flinders, Thomson, Barcoo and Georgina rivers and Charleys, Barker, Barambah, Cooper and Eyre streams.
The state’s highest rainfall (in the 24 hours to 9 a.m.) was 260 mm in Brovinia, in the Wide Bay Burnett region in the state’s southeast.
Heavier rain was possible in the south-east on Monday, with six-hourly rainfall totals of between 60 and 90mm, but would ease from Tuesday.
Australia experienced its fourth warmest year on record in 2025, with the annual temperature about 1.23°C higher than average, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Global warming, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has increased the frequency and severity of extreme weather events.
