The panic in Northern Territory supermarkets was palpable in January when shelves became largely empty.
It was not just avocadoes and Brie cheese missing. Entire aisles and fridges were desolate for several weeks following heavy rainfall in South Australia — described at the time as a "one-in-300-year weather event".
The downpour rendered parts of the Stuart Highway impassable and tore up long stretches of the road and rail network, sending the transport and logistics industry into chaos.
But as the country experiences yet another La Niña, what is being done to ensure essential goods can continue to be delivered to the NT in all weather conditions?
A meeting of minds
The newly established NT Logistics Advisory Council met for the first time last week and would advise the Territory government on how to make its supply chain more effective.
The council is comprised of industry leaders, including representatives from railway corporations, the NT Road Transport Association (NTRTA), the NT Chamber of Commerce, and chief executives from the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics (DIPL) and the Australian Logistics Council.
A DIPL spokesperson said immediate priorities for the council included supply chain mapping and investigating a potential "freight transition scheme".
NTRTA executive officer Louise Bilato said more work was needed on South Australian roads to prevent truckies getting cut off.
One of the worst affected areas was the small town of Glendambo on the Stuart Highway, which received more than 200 millimetres of rain in a 24-hour period.
"We know that the South Australians got some money to do the road repairs around Glendambo, and hopefully the rain doesn't fall exactly there again because it may not be fully completed," Ms Bilato said.
"But there will be other sections of the Stuart Highway that are subject to flooding, and the monies needed to actually make it a 100 per cent weatherproof road just aren't there.
"Eighty per cent of the funding for the national highway network comes from the federal government, so it has to be an ongoing negotiation."
Ms Bilato said preparations were underway in the event that truckies again needed to take a 3,000-kilometre detour through Queensland to bring supplies into the Territory.
"There is work being done on critical intersections in South Australia and New South Wales now that will allow road trains to access that route," she said.
Ms Bilato said large road trains were previously barred from travelling on roads used for the alternative route but, after temporary access was granted during the floods, the roads were now being upgraded to accommodate the trucks permanently.
Railway track repaired
The Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), which owns the rail line between Adelaide and Tarcoola in South Australia, closed its track for 24 days due to what it described as "extraordinary rainfall".
A spokesperson for the government-owned corporation said significant repairs had been carried out to bring the track back into operation.
"In our remediation work over 50,000 tonnes of ballast and rock were used to repair the track," the spokesperson said.
"ARTC carries out regular track and culvert inspections and maintenance to make sure the line is safe for operations."
Facing unpredictable weather
DIPL senior freight and logistics associate director Tracey Lines said there were no easy solutions in the face of unpredictable weather.
"We can't predict where the rain will fall, but we can do our best to make sure that the infrastructure is where it needs to be, and at a standard that it needs to be," she said.
Ms Lines said it was "unacceptable" that the Territory's food and fuel supplies could be cut off by a weather event, but said industry, business and government had to work together to come up with cost-effective solutions.
"We can look at all sorts of things to do that, from shipping, to warehousing and storage, the routes, and our Northern Territory connections to the national network," she said.
"But [in terms of] the solutions, there's immediate-term steps we can take, but there's also long term planning.
"If you compare Darwin — and particularly the Northern Territory as a whole — to the rest of the country, we have a different level of scale, so we have to bring together users of the large levels of freight so that we can have multi-users, so it actually becomes viable."
