Leaders of flood ravaged community say locals will return to no services

Nauiyu community leaders say residents will return to flood ravaged homes with no services Tue 9 Jun 2026 at 12:26pm In short: Nauiyu / Daly River's Aboriginal organisations say they will not be able to reinstate key services without the support of the NT and federal governments to help repair buildings and replace equipment. The community's Merrepen Arts Centre says residents will miss out on one of the few opportunities they have to generate private income. What's next? The NT government says it is continuing its talks with Nauiyu's Aboriginal organisations. When her whole town of Naiuyu / Daly River was swamped up to its roofs by the rain-swollen Daly River earlier this year, community leader Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann believed government assurances they would help the community to recover once the water receded. Ms Ungunmerr-Baumann has been happy to see the NT Government make progress cleaning out Nauiyu's houses, but she is worried the town's 400 residents are coming home to a community with no services. "It's great to see the contractors cleaning and tidying up the houses," she said. "But I don't know if there's going to be funding from the government to be able to replace what we've lost so we can get our services working again. "We are going to keep growling at them, saying 'Come on, hand over the money'." Dr Ungunmerr-Baumann, who was named Senior Australian of the Year in 2021, chairs the Green River Aboriginal Corporation which owns most of the non-government buildings in Nauiyu. This includes the community's aged care home, women's refuge and staff housing for most of the people employed by the community's service providers. The corporation's chief executive Wayne Buckley said Nauiyu's four Aboriginal corporations had sent a joint plea to the NT and federal governments for funds to repair flood-damaged buildings and replace equipment the organisations do not have the money to pay for. They have estimated essential rebuilding costs would be about $9 million in total. Mr Buckley has teamed up with the Miriam Rose Foundation, which runs youth, culture and after school programs, the Merrepen Arts Centre and the Nauiyu Nambiyu Aboriginal Corporation which owns the Daly River Store and Daly River Inn. He said the organisations started their entreaties after the NT government made an emergency declaration for Nauiyu in February, meaning it would start qualifying for federal and territory Disaster Recovery Funds. "We've written to both levels of government three times as a collective, starting from the beginning of March, and we haven't had a response thus far," Mr Buckley said. "For our assets we estimate the repair bill is about $4 million, we simply don't have that money." The organisations have emphasised to the two governments that they haven't been able to try to protect their buildings with insurance in the flood prone community. "The costs of adequate insurance would financially cripple our organisations. For example, last financial year, Green River Aboriginal Corporation was able to obtain a quote for a minimal level of flood insurance, but the cost of this would have been close to 20 per cent of our annual revenue," their funding request sent to the governments said. Mr Buckey said while assistance with the cleaning has been "amazing", they still need more help. "We're frustrated at the lack of support and information about other funding that might be available, that we thought was available, as victims of the flood emergency," he said. Miriam Rose Foundation executive officer Julie Calvert said if it the foundation could not get buildings and equipment to restart its youth programs there was a risk returning young people would get bored and get into trouble. She estimated the organisation would need about $70,000. "We provide art, culture, education and after-school programs for children, youth and their families, and if we cannot provide those activities to help them while they adjust and settle back in, they've got nothing" she said. "We're ready to go, we have the will, and the staff, but we don't have the assets. "For example, we had BMX bikes that the children could use to go on activities, they're all gone." Nauiyu's Merrepen Art Centre, whose fabrics can be found on runways and museums from Los Angeles to New Delhi, has also been hit hard by the floods. Chief executive Felicity Wright said Merrepen would not be able to resume generating what is one of the few private income sources for community members without government funding to help repair its building and equipment. "In our screen print workshop and printing area we've lost all our equipment, including the heat setting oven and the t-shirt carousel for printing t-shirts," she said. "We have also had our screens impacted — we had about 25 different designs on about 50 different screens, so we've lost about $120,000 to $150,000 worth of equipment. "The four organisations are saying 'This isn't a ridiculous amount of money, this is actually peanuts compared to all the expenses that a flood causes, but it will make a massive difference to the return'. "If people return and services aren't available, that's setting us up for a whole lot of social problems. "We've been doing pop-ups in Darwin generating some income but people want to be able to restart generating livelihoods for themselves." A spokesperson for the NT government said it was "continuing to work closely with the Victoria Daly Regional Council, the Green River Aboriginal Corporation and other service providers to support long-term recovery". The federal government told the ABC it was working to get services, including Naiuyu's aged care facility, restored "as soon as possible". Dr Ungunmerr-Baumann said she also wanted both governments to start planning to build an evacuation centre on nearby higher ground because she and other residents returning are facing the prospect of being flooded again in future. "There's another wet season coming and we'll probably get another flood," she said. "And it's now happening every year, so how about building something up on the hill up higher away from the river, so we don't keep having to evacuate to Darwin?"