Uluru closed down as ‘twice a century’ rains bring chaos
By A RECORD amount of rainfall in Australia has closed its famous national park at Uluru in what meteorologists described as a “twice a century” event.
Waterfalls have formed all over the park’s huge sandstone landmark, which is also known as Ayers Rock.
“There’s a lot of water coming off the rock and what that does is create channels across the ring road around Uluru,” said park ranger Mike Misso.
“Some of those roads there were flooded by about 300-400mm of rain. Quite spectacular but very hazardous road conditions.”
Rangers were forced to close the Northern Territory park at 9am on Boxing Day due to flooded roads and a risk of car accidents.
The heavy rain also led to flash flooding in the nearby town of Kintore, causing 25 houses to be inundated and forcing dozens of residents to evacuate the area.
Acting Superintendent Pauline Vicary told ABC News: “It is a remote area and it’s quite tricky, all the roads are impassable from the [Northern Territory] side into Kintore at the moment, and the Western Australia access is also significantly impaired.
“It’s quite dangerous to get through, so it’s obviously going to impair us getting resources in. There’s a significant number of houses that have been affected by flooding in some capacity.”
Kintore was almost completely cut off by the flooding, and so were the nearby towns of Papunya and Yulara, she said. No one has been injured in the flooding, though there has been damage to fences and some cars have been submerged.
There were fears yesterday that a carload of people travelling to Kintore from Western Australia may have been caught up in the floods.
Police said they had been unable to fly to the worst affected areas due to poor visibility.
‘It’s a remote area and it’s quite tricky, all the roads are impassable. It’s quite dangerous to get through’