In his small store in Mount Isa, almost 2,000km from the flood zones, grocer Joe da Silva is struggling to fill his shelves.
His fresh produce is gone. Stocks of other basics are dwindling. And there’s no certainty about when the next truck will arrive.
“If nothing comes, I have nothing to sell,” he tells the Guardian.
Da Silva, who runs Mount Isa’s Foodworks, is far from the hardest hit by the crippling grocery shortages that followed the rising waters across south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales.
But his situation is an indication of just how devastating the floods have been to the state’s supply chains. It also shows the fragility of a system still deeply reliant on key transport links to the south-east.
“It’s difficult because we are so isolated from everything … so the moment that there are floods, or fires, or any disaster occurs on the coast, we are the first ones who feel it up here,” he said.
The shortages continue to be most dire in towns and suburbs directly affected by the floods.
Coles and Woolworths have closed hundreds of stores between them at some point during the disaster. Coles still had eight stores shut on Wednesday, with limited hours at others. For those supermarkets that were still open, stocks were dwindling and shelves were reported to be increasingly bare.
In actions that mirrored the worst periods of the pandemic, both companies introduced purchase limits for customers. Coles and Woolworths both introduced two-pack purchase limits in affected regions, including fresh milk, meat and medicine, and one-pack limits on toilet paper and still water.
Woolworths expanded its limit to the entire state on Wednesday and executed contingency plans to try to use alternative inland distribution lines to circumvent floodwaters and road closures and get as much stock as possible into affected regions.
That included re-rerouting deliveries into Queensland from South Australia, and supplying northern Queensland from the state’s centre, via Emerald.
“As floods continue to ravage the east coast, critical supply lines into northern NSW and throughout Queensland have been impacted by road closures, limiting how quickly we can get stock into flood-affected regions,” Woolworths director of stores, Jeanette Fenske, said.
Evacuees, in particular, were facing acute challenges getting food.
In Lismore, police had to coordinate a helicopter food drop to about 300 flood evacuees sheltering at a church in Coraki.
Coraki resident Rudi Maxwell, who is sleeping in her car at the church evacuation centre with her dogs, said the evacuees have food but their supply is running low.
“They are aware that food is needed here, so they are loading up the helicopter and sending it over from Casino shortly,” Maxwell said.
“They have been really good at getting everyone fed and we have running water and it’s so hard to tell how many people are here, it’s so chaotic, a lot of us camping out in our cars. There may be upwards of 300 people and about that many cars as well.”
The floods have cut off Australia’s busiest highway, the Pacific Highway, and left trucks stranded, with all local freight ceasing until the waters recede.
The problem is compounded by the disruption to rail links and the derailment of a freight train near Gympie, and the flooding of warehouses.
Coles said it was trying to keep as many stores open and stocked as possible, but faced significant difficulties.
“We are working hard with our transport and supplier partners to reroute deliveries affected by road closures and ensure we can regularly maintain deliveries of essential groceries over the coming days,” a spokesperson said.
In Longreach in central Queensland, well out of reach of the flood waters, some grocery stores have had to shut entirely.
The Longreach Fruit Barn shut its doors on Tuesday, because it barely had any fresh produce to sell. That in turn created a knock-on effect for other local businesses, who use it as their source of fresh produce.
Fruit Barn’s owner, Sam Tweedale, was staying positive on Wednesday, despite the significant financial hit he was taking.
“Given that the region has been in drought for a long time, they just understand that these weather events are what they are and there’s no point really complaining about it,” he told the Guardian. “You can’t change it, I guess, at the end of the day.”
Both Tweedale and the local Foodworks, run by Rose and Lloyd Leggett, say new deliveries are expected to arrive later this week.
Rose Leggett said Longreach had, thankfully, avoided the kind of panic buying seen in cities during the pandemic.
“People are very sensible. You can rely on them to be pretty sensible about things,” she told the Guardian. “Most people realise that you’ve just got to poke along and be a bit steady and not overdo anything. If everyone panics and you sell out of everything, well then everyone goes without until the trucks get here.”
Earlier this week, Stephen Bartos, who authored a 2012 report examining resilience in Australia’s food chains, said connections to north Queensland had improved since the 2010-11 floods, but that the state’s south remained very vulnerable to being cut off because it was built on a flood plain.
“We need more duplication of supply lines like rail lines and roads, and we need to consider shorter supply chains and more local sources,” Bartos said.
