Intense, hammering bursts of rain in the Arnhem Land wet season can blast dangerous runnels across airstrips and deepen the isolation of homelands, particularly when there are no roads.
In the wet season, the red gravel airstrips of Arnhem Land can suffer the same fate as vehicle tracks in the region, with heavy rainfall causing washouts and flooding that can cut off already isolated homeland communities until the damage is repaired.
For residents of Gutjangan, the small homeland on Bremer Island, a single rain-carved washout in the middle of their airstrip can disconnect them from safe and rapid access to the mainland, and timely repairs are doubly important.
Laynhapuy Homelands Operations infrastructure worker Michael Geary catches a MAF flight to restore aircraft access to the island after a bout of heavy monsoon rains.
“We’ve got water washouts going across the airstrip from our wet season,” said Michael.
“So, I'm just repairing that for the pilots to come and be able to land in the community and take people out if it's an emergency.”
Earlier, Michael had taken a mini excavator to the island by barge to fill in the larger washouts, but he flies with MAF to complete the drainage works.
Aviation allows us to get to some places that we can't get to during the wet season. Where roads are closed or communities are closed, we will use planes, mainly MAF.
“I did work on the airstrip two weeks ago, and I'm just back here to try and get a bit of drainage work done to get us through the wet season,” he said
“Our work is pretty important, because most of it's the basic daily infrastructure that people use: power, water, and roads.
“Aviation allows us to get to some places that we can't get to during the wet season. Where roads are closed or communities are closed, we will use planes, mainly MAF.”
MAF pilot Timothée Berger appreciates the importance of a functioning airstrip for safety, but he also sees an airstrip in terms of a means to overcome some of the challenges of isolation.
Timothée said, “An airstrip is really significant because it allows quick response in case of emergencies if the roads are too hard or too risky to take and we need to go to the hospital.
“It makes a big difference as, otherwise, these homelands will be really isolated and much harder to live in.”
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Watch Timothée's flight in this video: