Northern Territory emergency service workers are used to rescuing people from the water. But they're typically helping people at sea - not in flood waters.
Sen Const Ben Parfitt found himself escorting two dozen school kids from a caravan park that was waist-deep in water last weekend when Katherine was inundated by flood levels not seen since the 1990s. Then he was involved in rescuing a couple and their German shepherd from the roof of a four-wheel drive. That vision has gone viral.
The high schoolers and their teachers were without power, water or food, as their camping weekend suddenly turned into a rescue mission. Parfitt and his search and rescue colleagues ferried them out in boats to a makeshift school shelter.
"That 24-hour period was worse than the worst-case scenario the Bureau of Meteorology had predicted," he says.
"Ninety per cent of rescues were people getting stuck in their dwellings that had become cut off. We were doing boat rescues with 12 animals in one boat. We even assisted a cow - literally took it by its horns as it was swimming."
Two overseas backpackers have died amid northern Australia's floods, with a further 200mm of rainfall possible across the Top End over the weekend.
Police and emergency services were also called to Burnett River north of Bundaberg at about 1am on Friday following reports another man, aged 51, had gone into the water from a houseboat.
Bureau senior meteorologist Dean Narramore says forecast rains are likely to lead to more rapid river rises. Major flood warnings were in place for the Daly and Georgina rivers, as well as Eyre Creek, in the Northern Territory.
In Queensland, major flood warnings were in place for the Fitzroy, Flinders, Upper Balonne, Thomson, Alice, and Lower Condamine rivers and Cooper Creek, while the community of Longreach - 1,200km north-west of Brisbane - had been told to prepare to leave.
"Pretty much all of western NT is under flood watches, from Darwin to the rock [Uluru], in anticipation of widespread heavy rainfall," he says.
Hundreds of homes, businesses and cattle stations in parts of the NT and Queensland have been flooded in the past week, with residents forced to shelter on rooftops and more than 1,000 evacuations across Bundaberg, Katherine and the remote Top End communities of Nauiyu (Daly River), Nganmarriyanga (formerly known as Palumpa), Beswick and Jilkminggan.
Crocodiles have been spotted floating down residential streets in Katherine, while in Bundaberg, dozens of boats have gone missing or been swept away in the flood waters. In one instance, two trawlers were found in the middle of a cane field. In another, three yachts were ditched onto a rocky embankment.
Debris continues to stream down swelling rivers, from gas bottles to kegs.
A regional helicopter service, LifeFlight, has been out every day conducting rescues, including a woman bitten by a snake her cat dragged into the house.
The woman, aged in her 70s, couldn't be reached by the local Queensland ambulance service because the North Bundaberg roads were flooded. She was transported to hospital in a stable condition.
Heli-Muster NT usually helps farmers muster cattle by air, but has temporarily transformed into an emergency service over the past week, ferrying supplies and evacuating stranded families and animals.
One family were at the remote Munbililla campgrounds, around 300km east of Katherine, with their four German shepherds when cut off by rapidly rising flood waters on Wednesday.
The couple, their 22-year-old daughter and the pets were helicoptered out by Heli-Muster after police got them to drier land.
The same day, Heli-Muster's pilot, John Armstrong, helped police rescue a couple and their German shepherd from a 4WD that had become stranded in raging flood waters on a creek crossing west of Katherine.
The couple "were standing on the guardrail on the road, which the car had been jammed up against, and were hanging onto the roof-rack of the Prado," Armstrong told the ABC.
"I just flew out and hovered ... and Ben [Parfitt] reached out and helped the first lady in. She wasn’t the most mobile, but she did pretty well, and then we went back for the second fella.
“It wasn’t until we landed that a policeman came up and said: ‘Hey we’ve got a problem, we’ve got to go back and get the dog.’”
Parfitt, who had rescued the school children on the weekend, helped concoct a plan to ferry the dog, called Seven, to safety. The officer was dropped onto the roof of the vehicle, and the helicopter moved off to avoid scaring it with the noise.
“It was an amazing dog,” Parfitt says. “It was frightened but it could tell I was trying to help it. I introduced myself, gave it a quick pat, and it licked my hand.”
He then smashed the window furthest from the dog and cleared the glass so it could hop out.
“It was a bit of a struggle trying to persuade the dog to basically jump into my arms so I could put him on the roof,” he says. “But then I jumped on top of the car, lay on top of him and John put the helicopter right next to me.”
More than 800 people remain in evacuation centres across the NT, unable to survey the damage to their homes.
Ben Hockey, who owns a landscaping business in Katherine, has spent the past week volunteering around the clock. Initially, he was delivering sandbags to residents, permitted by police to enter flood zones and wade through waist-deep water to houses.
In recent days, he's been assisting with the cleanup.
"Some people have lost absolutely everything," he says.
"I'm 6' 1", we had one local electronics business that had 6' 2" water going through his house, and all the properties around him. The payments by the federal government are amazing, but they won't be enough."
Hockey's days consist of entering flood-affected homes, sheds and buildings and pulling whatever isn't salvageable onto the street to be picked up by the council. Then he's pressure washing and disinfecting slicks of mud and debris.
A lot of the people's houses we're going to, they're putting on a brave face, but you look into their eyes and can see so many are destroyed and don't know what to do next.
Do you give up? Do you leave town? Or do you stick it out and start again? Properties and resources can be replaced, but the mental effects of natural disasters can last a lifetime.
Australia experienced its fourth-warmest year on record in 2025, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Global heating, driven mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, has increased the frequency and severity of extreme weather events.