The Northern Territory has always prided itself on being tough. We’re known for facing down extreme heat, isolation and crocs. However, there is a point at which resilience stops being a virtue. And this wet season, we’ve felt invisible to the rest of Australia.

Four separate national disaster declarations in a single wet season. And now a fifth disaster, Tropical Cyclone Narelle, is barrelling towards us.

The 2025–26 wet season has been unlike anything the Northern Territory has ever experienced.

It began with Tropical Cyclone Fina hitting the Cobourg Peninsula and Darwin in November 2025, the earliest cyclone to make landfall on the NT coast since records began, and the most intense cyclone to hit Darwin since Cyclone Tracy.

Then came the floods. A tropical low settled over central Australia in late February, with flooding affecting approximately 85% of roads across the Barkly region.

This month, Katherine has experienced its highest flood level since 1998. The hospital was evacuated. Schools were closed. More than 1,000 residents were moved to safety. While this made national headlines for a day or two, the ongoing flooding and stranding of multiple First Nations communities right across the Top End has barely rated a mention.

And now, many of the same communities still reeling from the latest floods are preparing for Tropical Cyclone Narelle to make landfall and barrel across our flood-ravaged landscapes again, dumping hundreds of millimetres of rain.

Darwin has not been immune. Unbelievably for a capital city, Darwin’s main water supply was almost cut off entirely when unprecedented flooding struck our water supply, and nearby residents of Darwin River lost everything.

Remote and First Nations communities have borne the worst of it, and the patchwork emergency response has been criticised by multiple Aboriginal peak bodies.

Residents from the remote communities of Naiyu and Palumpa have been evacuated to the Darwin showgrounds and Adelaide River, with no timeline on when they can return to their homes. Residents of Jilkminggan, south of Katherine, remain stranded in a shed at Mataranka. About 500 residents of Numbulwar community have been airlifted to Darwin in response to Tropical Cyclone Narelle.

Pastoralists across the Territory have been left with destroyed fencing, inundated infrastructure, and severely eroded access roads.

Critical supply routes have been severed. Boil water alerts have been issued across multiple communities.

These are people who, in many cases, have already been waiting years for adequate infrastructure, housing and support from governments who forget the Territory is the almost twice the size of Texas.

The scale of these disasters is unprecedented and devastating. Yet the national media has given it a fraction of the attention it deserves, because the Territory is considered out of sight and out of mind. If four consecutive disaster declarations had struck a capital city in the south-east, this would be the only story in the country.

People sometimes speak about the economic costs of climate change as something to be tallied up in coming decades. In Darwin, that future has arrived.

Darwin is now Australia’s most expensive city for home insurance, ahead of Sydney and Brisbane – with average home insurance premiums of $4,015 per year. The combination of escalating climate disasters and rising construction costs has made insuring a home in the Territory a luxury many cannot afford.

The National Climate Risk Assessment paints an even starker picture of what lies ahead. It forecasts a 423% increase in heat-related deaths in Darwin. Close to 70% of the Northern Territory’s entire population will live in high or very high-risk areas.

These are not projections from some distant, hypothetical scenario. They describe our current reality – the one we are accelerating with every fracking project approved, every climate target abandoned by the NT government.

The NT government’s review into the Katherine flooding is welcome. But it is impossible to take that review fully seriously when it comes from a chief minister who has scrapped the Territory’s climate and renewable energy targets. You cannot review your way out of a crisis you refuse to name.

The Northern Territory is ground zero for fossil fuel expansion in this country, from Santos’s toxic Barossa gas project to the Beetaloo Bason fracking carbon bomb, to Inpex’s polluting Ichthys gas plant to the taxpayer-funded proposed Middle Arm gas and petrochemical hub.

And as we watch the LNG ships sail out of Darwin Harbour earning billions in profits, while we pay the price, it’s never been clearer to people living in the NT that companies like Santos and Inpex should be forced to pay for the destruction their projects have unleashed. It’s well past time for a 25% tax on gas exports, and a climate pollution levy levelled on fossil fuel companies so we can raise the funds to respond to these escalating disasters and address the cost-of-living crisis in Australia.

The Territory has always asked a lot of the people who call it home. It demands resilience, adaptability and a tolerance for extremes. But there is a limit to what communities can endure when disaster follows disaster without pause, without adequate resources, and without leadership that is honest about the cause.

The climate crisis is here for the people of the Northern Territory. And the rest of Australia needs to start paying attention.

Dr Kirsty Howey is executive director of the Environment Centre NT

Dr Kirsty Howey is executive director of the Environment Centre NT

© The Guardian