Australia Weather News

An entire outback city is running on backup generators and the power infrastructure company says it could take weeks to repair the damage, after a wild storm hit Far West New South Wales Wednesday night. 

A short burst of high speed winds and heavy hail battered an area south of Broken Hill, damaging a section of the 220,000-volt powerlines that supply power to the city and surrounding communities, causing an outage about midnight.

Residents in the affected area, about 56 kilometres south of Broken Hill, said seven large transmission towers had crumpled.

Power infrastructure owner Transgrid said its teams were responding to the damage, but repairs would take a couple of weeks. 

Transgrid and Essential Energy remind everyone to keep a safe distance from any fallen powerlines.

The power outage stretches from Wilcannia and Menindee to Tibooburra and the Queensland border, affecting an estimated 10,000 residents.

Transgrid said backup diesel generation had restored power to most of Broken Hill.

Temperatures in the region were expected to hit 40 degrees on Thursday. 

Five minutes of mayhem

Evan Gualke is a volunteer at the Australian Wildlife Conservatory station in Scotia, 150km south of Broken Hill.

Sleeping in a tiny unit on a warm humid night, he had flung all the doors open.

"It was full on," he said.

Mr Gualke said hail fell through the opened doors and windows and winds rocked the unit.

"I feel like the wind was 50 knots plus, it was unbelievable. It was phenomenal," he said.

Five minutes later he said the storm had passed and he could see the stars again.

"[It was] only 15 millimetres of rain, but it came very quickly," he said.

Mine on stand-by 

Broken Hill's largest mine, Perilya, had its emergency plans triggered when the power went out. 

Perilya general manager Chris Chindanya said all workers were brought safely to the surface and put on stand-by.

"The backup power does not have the capacity for us to run the underground line," he said.

Mining companies have the right to put miners on stand-by when it is not safe to be underground.

They also have the right to not pay them, instead offering the use of annual leave.

Union representative with the New Wales Mines Worker Alliance Todd Ferguson said it could put workers in a difficult position.

"It's not a good thing if you're running out of leave, it's meant to be used to be with family," he said.