Police planning rescue group of stranded travellers in flooded WA outback

The missing people were located at about 4pm on Wednesday. (Supplied: WA Police)

Emergency services are working on a rescue plan for eight people stranded in a remote part of Western Australia’s Goldfields, which remains affected by widespread flooding.

The group left Kalgoorlie-Boulder on Monday for the Aboriginal community of Tjuntjuntjara, which is about 650 kilometres to the north-east of the city and ranks as one of Australia’s most isolated communities.

But they never arrived at their destination and were located on Wednesday afternoon after police launched an aerial search.

Police say they are working out how to extract them from the “challenging terrain”.

The incident comes barely a month after seven people became bogged on their way to Tjuntjuntjara and spent four nights in bushland before being rescued by helicopter.

The last rescue required a helicopter to make a refuelling stop at the Tropicana gold mine, 330km north-east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

Road only open to four-wheel drives

Residents of Tjuntjuntjara were stranded in Kalgoorlie-Boulder for weeks due to the flooding until special flights were organised to take them home.

The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder has partially reopened the Trans Access Road, the route most commonly taken to Tjuntjuntjara, which runs adjacent to the Trans Australian Railway Line.

But it is only open to four-wheel drive vehicles after inspections this week revealed there is still excess water covering the unsealed road between the remote rail outpost of Kitchener, about 250km east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, and Rawlinna on the Nullarbor.

Rawlinna is home to Australia’s biggest sheep station, which has been devastated by flooding after more than 300 millimetres of rain fell on parts of the property in just a few days.

The drought-breaking flooding closed the Trans Australian Railway Line for 21 days and briefly affected the Eyre Highway.

The Eyre Bird Observatory near Cocklebiddy reopened this week, more than six weeks after it was hit by flooding with a 24-hour record of 141.2mm recorded on March 10.

Eyre recorded 352.2mm of rain last month, equivalent to 10 times its monthly average rainfall for March.