Word: burketown
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Just west of Burketown, Highway 1 on the map turns into a dotted line that staggers all the way to Borroloola, across the Northern Territory border. On the ground, that translates to 480 corrugated kilometers of red dirt and gravel-a track that's bone-jarring at the best of times and, in the wet season, impassable. For the people who live along the road, keeping that dotted line from disappearing off the map is an unrelenting struggle...
...There's never a dull moment,'' says Burke Shire Mayor Annie Clarke, whose tiny council oversees the 225-km stretch from Burketown to the border. Floods create much of the drama: monsoonal rains and cyclones regularly swell Gulf Country rivers and send stormy seas surging across the low coastline. Early this year, floods inundated 6,000 sq. km of Burke Shire, turning Highway 1 into a chain of atolls; supplies had to be dropped to some settlements by helicopter. At Floraville station, 73 km south of the town-and 80 km inland-the homestead was an island for two weeks...
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