The floor did not crack or groan. It simply gave way. One moment a woman from Canberra was using a long drop toilet at the Henbury Meteorite Craters, roughly 145 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs, and the next she had plummeted nearly two metres into the waste pit below. The structure had been quietly failing for a long time. NT WorkSafe later confirmed the incident was being treated as a dangerous structure failure, with the floor weakened by rust long before anyone stepped onto it.

The family had been driving home from a visit to relatives in Darwin when they stopped at the remote roadside facility. It was meant to be a brief rest stop at one of the Northern Territory's better-known tourist landmarks, a self-guided conservation reserve containing 12 meteorite craters formed roughly 4,700 years ago when a meteor weighing several tonnes disintegrated at over 40,000 kilometres per hour on impact with the earth.

No Signal, No Options, No Way Out

With no mobile phone coverage at the isolated site, the woman's husband faced a decision no one wants to make. He loaded their two children into the car and drove to Stuart Wells, 53 kilometres away, to find either help or a phone signal. That left her alone in the pit, in the dark, for close to three hours.

The medical risks in that situation are significant. Exposure to human waste carries real threats including bacterial infections, parasites, hepatitis A, tetanus, and skin infections. She was, by all accounts, incredibly shaken when she was eventually reached.

The Man Who Actually Pulled Her Out

The person who freed her was not her husband. A man named Mr Sherman reached the site while her husband was still out seeking help. Using tools from his own vehicle, Sherman dismantled part of the toilet structure, broke through the surrounding walls, and rigged a system to haul her back up to the surface. She came out with only minor cuts.

She was then transported 144 kilometres to Alice Springs Hospital for further evaluation.

A Familiar Problem in Remote Australia

This is not the first time a pit toilet has failed in a remote or regional Australian location. In mid-2024, firefighters in Indigo Valley in Victoria had to dismantle a similar structure after a man became trapped inside one. The Action for Alice community Facebook page posted photos of the aftermath of the Henbury incident and described the site as "the decaying infrastructure of NT tourism," adding that the scene would not be featuring in any tourism brochures.

NT WorkSafe's confirmation that the collapse was a structural failure puts the responsibility squarely on maintenance. The crater reserve remains one of five meteorite impact sites in Australia where fragments are still present, and it draws a steady stream of travellers passing through the outback. The toilet that failed them had been rusting through for long enough that the floor could no longer hold a person's weight. No warning. No sign. Just a floor that was done.