Lockhart River residents and two separate groups of tourists who have been stranded for almost two weeks by floodwaters in remote areas of Cape York may have to wait another week before rivers recede enough for vehicles to pass through.
It comes after road access was cut to river crossings at the Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers, leaving two groups of 22 tourists cut off.
The first group had been returning to the small Aboriginal community of Lockhart River after attending a funeral when they got stranded on the Thursday before Easter.
A pregnant woman, as well as some elderly people and young children, were evacuated late last week after having already spent five days at the site.
Around eight individuals of the original 11 remain there with their vehicles.
The second group, campers from Newcastle in New South Wales, consists of 11 young men and women with four four-wheel-drive vehicles.
David Claudie, who lives not far from where both groups are camped and is their only point for communication, said there appears to be more rain on the horizon.
"We've got rain clouds building up. Hopefully, the river can go down a little bit, just enough for them to cross. We've got to keep our fingers crossed. But if the rain comes in now, the rivers will fill up again."
Mr Claudie, the CEO of Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation, lives with his wife and their five children at Chuulangun on Kuuku I'Yu Northern Kaanju Homelands, between the Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers.
He said he has been visited by both groups of people and has shared food and supplies with them.
"They're all safe. It's just that they are running out of food," he said.
He said the group of tourists were camping about 7 kilometres away from his home at the old Wenlock Goldfields.
"The two fellows that came in this morning, they said it [the water] was over their heads," Mr Claudie said.
The other group, from Lockhart River, is camped about 20km away.
Using up reserves to survive
While local councils have dropped food to the groups by helicopter, Mr Claudie said supplies were running low, not just for the people stranded, but now for his family as well.
A plane that was due to deliver groceries last week was unable to land at Mr Claudie's airstrip due to wet conditions.
While he said he wanted to help those who were stranded, he does not know how much longer he can.
"We want to help but you can't pull blood out of a stone," Mr Claudie said.
"They've been offering me money for food and smokes and tobacco, but what am I going to spend it on out here?
"Every wet season, prior to the season, I stock up on food and all that. I know the wet is coming.
"People like us already have enough stress on our shoulders. We don't need any more."
Already children and women from the local group of people have been airlifted out, but Mr Claudie said the others want to stay with their vehicles.
He told the groups to secure their cars and take a helicopter to Weipa to wait out the wet, rather than rely on Cape communities to continue arranging expensive food drops.
Brad Allan, the manager of the Archer River Roadhouse, has been assisting the groups with food drops and did three runs in his light helicopter — a Robinson R44 — to evacuate some members of the Lockhart River group.
"The Lockhart River people are all together on the Western side of the Pascoe River, and the [tourists] from down south are on the eastern side of the Wenlock, so they're in between the two rivers," Mr Allan said.
Mr Allan said a burst of late wet-season rain had caught people unawares, with hundreds of millimetres in rainfall measured from the Daintree to across the cape since Easter.
"That's what's caught people out, you know, travelling up and it was reasonably dry, and they were able to access some of these places, and then once we started getting this rain, because everything is wet, it doesn't take much to bring those rivers up," he said.
"Coming up to Easter had been a dry spell, and there hadn't been a lot of rain on the horizon.
"But you're never out of the woods until the end of April, because I've certainly seen it pretty wet up here in late April," Mr Allan said.
"I don't think they expected to get stuck out there that long."
Mr Allan said the group of tourists ranged in age from their 20s to their 50s and remained in good spirits.
There is no phone reception for either group, with the closest Telstra tower at least 50km away.
A ranger based at the nearby Chuulanguun campground has been providing assistance and has a landline phone.
Contingency planning underway
Lockhart River Aboriginal Shire Council Mayor Wayne Butcher said they had been in contact with the groups via the local ranger.
Councillor Butcher said if the weather did not improve soon, allowing the rivers to recede, a formal evacuation via an SES aircraft based on Thursday Island may be necessary.
The Cook Shire Disaster Management service said they were aware of the situation and remained on stand-by to assist if an evacuation was ordered.
