Two New Zealanders caught up in the path of Tropical Cyclone Ilsa say the scale of the weather system is staggering.
Stacey and Tony Smith from Papamoa told 1News that they'd been told to evacuate from Broome by the defence force.
The two have been travelling with their kids around Australia since the pandemic, spending the last few months in Western Australia.
"We've got a brand-new van, and we didn't want to risk it getting damaged, so we just decided to head inland," Stacey said.
While the cyclone's been downgraded to a category three this afternoon, it hit the coast at a category five, the most extreme level.
The system was recorded as bringing winds of 213km/h before it started to ease.
"It was pretty wild day, we had a heap of rain yesterday and a lot of high winds here yesterday," Tony said.
"Obviously, we're just catching the tail of it or the edge of it."
The couple told 1News that they were "shin-deep" in water at one point and had to dig a moat around their campervan.
Stacey said most New Zealanders would be surprised by the size of Tropical Cyclone Ilsa, with around 700km of coastline in the warning zone.
"It's just a colossal amount of area that [the] cyclone is just raging over," she said.
"You do have little pockets of people the whole way along, even though the townships might be few and far between."
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