The main road into Western Australia from the eastern states has been cut since Christmas Day, with seven bushfires burning in the south-west of the state expected to worsen under catastrophic conditions on Thursday.

The Caiguna Roadhouse, which is 1,000km east of Perth, is the last stop before the roadblock on the eastern side of the Eyre Highway. The western edge of the highway is cut off 320km away at Norseman, and a further 200km of the road to Perth is cut between Norseman and Esperance.

The roadhouse had run out of toilet paper on Wednesday and is supporting more than 120 people on a limited supply of desalinated water, with temperatures forecast to reach 48C on Thursday.

Roadhouse manager Maureen O’Halloran said another 22 trucks and 50 other vehicles were parked out the front of the roadhouse, on top of the 120 people who had registered and were staying under the shade out the back, and said the crowd was putting stress on the roadhouse’s supplies.

Authorities said on Thursday that the road would be closed for at least another five days.

@dfes_wa has flown in emergency supplies to Caiguna on the Nullarbor where about 250 people have been stranded by bushfires.



The forecast for today is catastrophic fire conditions with temperatures of up to 41C and 40km/h winds.@abcperth @ABCRural @abcnews pic.twitter.com/HTWqPBk0aB — Jarrod Lucas (@jarrodl17) January 1, 2020

A helicopter dropped off the much-needed toilet paper on Wednesday and another plane will deposit fresh produce to the Caiguna, Cocklebiddy and Madura roadhouses later this week.

“We ran out of toilet paper so that’s why they had to come in yesterday, especially for hygienic purposes,” O’Halloran told Perth radio station 6PR on Thursday. “It is draining our basic supplies because we wouldn’t have this many people using our water. We don’t have rain here so we actually make our water here, so that desalination plant is really really getting smashed at the moment.”

The town of Norseman in the midst of the Great Western Woodlands, which is the largest remaining temperate woodlands in the world, has been cut off on four sides since Christmas Day.

“There’s four roads in and out and there’s four closed roads,” Dundas shire president Laurene Bonza said.

But she stressed that they were not as badly impacted as communities in the eastern states. Towns in East Gippsland and the New South Wales south coast are being evacuated by air and sea, after surviving the bushfire by fleeing to the beach.

“The whole country is on fire,” she said. “It’s a disaster of epic proportions.”

Bonza said Norseman itself was well-stocked with supplies, but urged anyone planning to travel along the Eyre Highway to defer their travel or turn back.

“They think that there are towns along that road, and there aren’t,” she said. “All of those names along that road are just roadhouses, there are no towns.

“The main message that we are trying to get out is people just can’t travel on the Eyre Highway, because they are going to get stuck.”

The Ngadju Indigenous rangers are the firefighting force in Norseman, and they have been supported by volunteers from bush fire brigades from around WA. All accommodation in Norseman is filled with firefighters, Bonza said.

The dryness index in Norseman is at 170 – meaning the town will need at least 170mm of rain to reach its saturation point.

They had 19mm on Christmas night, which was just enough for give firefighters a break on Boxing Day. They had a barbecue and a swim in the pool.

Crews have been conducting extensive backburns but Bonza said the fires remained uncontrolled.

“Every time they think they have got it the wind changes and it runs off in another direction.”

The fire danger rating for both the Goldfields and Eucla regions on Thursday was catastrophic.