Flooding has damaged several homes in the Daly River community, with authorities saying the river is now expected to reach major flood level from Monday.

Earlier this week almost 300 people from the remote community — located 220 kilometres south-west of Darwin — were evacuated to the Northern Territory capital due to the flood threat, with only a small number of residents staying behind.

In an update on Sunday, incident controller David Moore said flooding at Daly River remained at a moderate level, with the river at 13.71 metres as of 1:45pm Sunday.

He said the river was expected to peak at 14m on Monday — reaching the major flood level — and remain at that height throughout Tuesday.

A man standing in front of a banner inside a room and speaking to someone off-camera.

David Moore says the river is now expected to reach major flood level on Monday and into Tuesday.  (ABC News: Pete Garnish)

“I can say that we’ve had some minor water damage within [the] Daly River community itself,” he said.

“Three houses have currently experienced a little bit of water damage from the rising flood … in the northern end of Daly River.”

“Having a look at the pictures that I’ve seen today, and an assessment of the community, the rest of the community is dry, although the water is rising and it’s getting narrow,” he said.

“I can say that as a picture of Daly River, three quarters of the airstrip is currently underwater. There are no [passable] roads into Daly River — they are currently underwater.

He said at this stage the water was “just lapping” at the affected homes, though authorities would continue to monitor them.

Floodwaters encroaching near a remote town, in a lush green landscape.

The vast majority of people in the community of Daly River were evacuated on Wednesday.  (Supplied: NT government)

Superintendent Moore said it was unlikely any homes would be inundated when the flooding reached peak levels.

“The information that we do have from the modelling, of 14m [flood levels], is that there shouldn’t be too much damage to an extensive amount of homes,” he said.

“Unpredictability can happen, but at this stage we’re not seeing that damage at 14m.

“This is not similar to the flood of 2018, where we lost a majority of the community to flooding. Those levels were well in excess of 16m, 17m.” 

A thin road through a lush and green remote remote area with deep floodwater on either side.

David Moore says flooding has cut off all roads in and out of the Daly River community. (Supplied: NT government)

He said it could be several days to a week before emergency services could access the community, depending on the level of damage or how quickly the water receded.

“[The water] is currently very slow-moving — I think we’ve had 0.3m since this morning to today. So I’m expecting to allow at least a few days for that water to come down, before our survey and assessment teams can actually get in there, do a proper survey,” he said.

Nearby communities being monitored

As the flood threat continues, Superintendent Moore said emergency services were also monitoring a number of other communities in the region.

He said at least 60 residents of nearby homelands had decided to stay, and while they were not at risk of being inundated by flooding, most had seen access to their communities cut off.

Governments accused of inaction on remote flood planning

The Northern Territory and federal governments are being accused of failing to plan long term to protect NT remote communities from flooding.

“We’re in daily contact with those particular people, and everything has been reported quite well at this stage,” he said.

“We have adequate means to supply food and water if required.”

It comes after a Woodycupaldiya traditional owner said her small community had been unable to safely access food due to flooding and called for government help.

Last week the large community of Wadeye, 180km south-west of Daly River, lost access to 4G and 5G mobile services in an outage, with Telstra saying flooding at its regional cable site made repairs too dangerous at this stage.

Superintendent Moore said police had since travelled to the community with Starlink equipment and temporarily restored services, meaning residents now had reception near the police station and school.

He said the outage had been caused by a data cable severed close to Daly River, with contractors currently unable to reach the site because it was under water. 

“We believe at this stage the temporary mechanisms we’ve put into place are adequate, up until we can get in there to fix the actual route of the problem,” he said.