EXPERTS battling a rabies epidemic in Bali are warning Australians to brace for the arrival of the disease.

Rabies is island-hopping towards Australia through the Indonesian archipelago and is about 600km north of Darwin on the island of Pulau Larat, where it killed 19 people in 2010.

Helen Scott Orr, a former NSW chief veterinary officer working with the Indonesian government to help eradicate rabies from Bali, said the risk to Australia was increasing as more Indonesian islands fell to the disease.

Rabies has spread to 24 of Indonesia's 33 provinces.

"If it gets into West Papua, it is strongly likely that it will spread slowly and inexorably down through the entire island of Papua New Guinea, in which case it would be extremely close to our borders across the Torres Strait," Dr Scott Orr said.

"We don't know if the threat will be there in one year, in five years, in 10 years, or in 20 years -- it's just a likelihood that the threat will come."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry -- which oversees the Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy -- said rabies outbreaks on the Indonesian islands of Flores, Bali, Pulau Larat and Ambon had increased the risk of the disease entering Australia.

She said the "most likely potential pathway into remote northern Australia is an illegally imported, infected animal arriving by boat".

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