A big swell pounds the break wall at Wollongong harbour in NSW. Photo: Robert Peep
rachel lebihan, Matthew Cranston and AAP
Car flooded at Clayfield.
Yacht/catamaran washed up at middle park beach.
Eagle St at high tide, around 10pm Sunday evening.
Brighton, north of Brisbane.
Firefighters near a fallen tree in the suburb of Gordon Park in Brisbane after the rescue of a woman and her child.
Flooding along the Ipswich motorway.
A boat that has been washed up onto rocks at Airlie Beach.
People recover chickens from Northey street city farm Brisbane.
Volunteers help remove belonging from a resident’s home in Enid Street, Ipswich.
Floods in Downey Park in Brisbane.
A fallen tree in Gordon Park, Brisbane which trapped a mother and child.
Wollongong harbour takes a pounding.
Hundreds of emergency service workers are on standby across NSW and floodwaters are still rising as ex-tropical cyclone Oswald tracks south.
Some 2000 people were cut off in the state’s drenched north and flood warnings remained in place for seven NSW river systems on Monday.
The Bureau of Meteorology has warned residents near the Tweed River, Wilsons and Richmond Rivers and the Clarence Valley they could face major flooding.
State Emergency Service spokesman Phil Campbell said the service had already received 1400 calls for help mainly from the north-east corner of NSW.
He said there have been 13 flood rescues already, including several involving people who had ignored warnings and tried to drive through floodwaters in the Tweed area.
A severe weather warning takes in major population centres including metropolitan Sydney and the Hunter region, and the weather system is expected to reach the Illawarra at dawn on Tuesday.
Northern Sydney SES incident controller Tony Pinelli said rescuers are bracing for prolonged rainfall, gale force winds and damaging surf conditions.
He said people travelling home after the long weekend should be extremely careful when driving on the rain sodden roads.
Bundaberg residents ordered to evacuate
Meanwhile, in Queensland mandatory evacuations have been ordered in Bundaberg’s north, with authorities saying people could die if they stay.
The Burnett River continues to head towards an unprecedented peak. The river is 9.1m and rapidly rising.
It’s expected to reach at least 9.5 metres on Monday, and possibly as high as 10 metres, which is well beyond the levels recorded in 2010-11 and in 1942, when the current record was set.
There have been dramatic helicopter rescues of people in the north Bundaberg area during the day.
The velocity of the water flowing through north Bundaberg has been put at 75 kilometres and the Burnett River is at 9 metres, and rising.
Councillor Tony Riccardi said all residents in that area, including Belmont Park and One Mile Road, are now subject to a mandatory evacuation order.
Previously authorities had only been advising residents to leave.
Mr Riccardi said about 70 per cent of north Bundaberg residents have water in their yard or over the floor boards.
Widespread flooding in Queensland has now claimed three lives. The body of a man, believed to be a motorcyclist who was swept off the road, has been has been found in floodwaters south of Brisbane.
He’s the third person killed in the floods. Police say the body was found in Oxley Creek about 7am (AEST).
Police say the two other people who have died in the floods are an 81-year-old man whose body was pulled from the water near Bundaberg and a 27-year-old man who was found near Gympie.
A tree also fell on a mother and son in Brisbane’s north. The 30-year-old woman and boy have been taken to hospital with head injuries. Their conditions are not known.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the wild weather in Queensland caused by cyclone Oswald has broken a lot of hearts.
She also discussed the flood crisis in Queensland and said she has spoken to Queensland Premier Campbell Newman on Sunday to offer federal government support as needed.
She said this is a particularly heart breaking time for people who are facing their second and third flood in a two year period.
The cyclone has caused millions of dollars worth of damage and cut power to 225,000 properties. Energex latest report notes that 1200 powerlines are down across the state.
In Brisbane 68 roads are closed due to flooding, fallen powerlines or trees. Brisbane City Council has handed out over 18,000 sandbags since Friday morning.
Damage bill
Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan confirmed that 35 local authorities had been declared eligible for disaster relief payments.
Mr Swan said it was too early to tell whether the damage bill would top the $6 billion mark from the devastating floods of 2011. A new Queensland Flood Appeal has been launched with the state government donating $1 million already.
The group declared large parts of Queensland to be ‘catastrophic’, with moderate to severe damage experienced from the NSW border to Cairns.
Telstra services are also down across much of central and northern Queensland causing havoc for emergency services, which have been called out for eight emergency rescues.
The collapse in telecommunications services came as authorities warned residents in low-lying areas in the Lockyer Valley in southeast Queensland to evacuate and seek higher ground before major flooding hits.
The peak level in the Brisbane River is set to reach 2.6 metres, well under the 4-metre level reached during the devastating 2011 floods.
Major flooding was expected overnight downstream of Laidley and Gatton in Lockyer Creek and Laidley Creek and anyone at risk of flooding should seek higher ground, the warning said.
Residents around the Mary River at Gympie were also warned of flooding, with those in low-lying areas urged to relocate to higher ground if necessary before an expected flood peak of 21 metres hits.
As dawn broke, rescuers in the flood-hit city of Bundaberg were battling to reach 30 people trapped on rooftops.
Premier Campbell Newman said it’s been too dangerous to save those people, but efforts were continuing.
Bundaberg flood crest 8.7m
He said the flood in Bundaberg was expected to break all records, with water levels reaching 8.7 metres at 5am on Monday.
Mr Newman said the city was expecting a flood “well and truly beyond the formal record flood of 1942” and possibly bigger than a flood that wasn’t properly recorded in the 1890s.
“There is quite a critical situation there at the moment with 30 people stranded on roofs,” he told ABC News 24.
Telstra said that most of the landline and broadband services were down in Mackay, Freshwater, Cairns, Rockhampton, Townsville, Mount Isa and Gladstone.
Many mobile services are out in central and northern parts of the state. The emergency triple zero service has also been impacted by the damage and new emergency numbers for key population cities were set up (see below).
The carrier has flown crews into central and northern Queensland to repair damage, but services are not expected to be restored until Monday afternoon at the earliest.
Police say where possible, people impacted by the Telstra outage should use mobile phone coverage of an alternative carrier to call triple zero.
Telstra's coastal fibre-optic cable, which carries much of the state's communications needs, was damaged by severe flooding in the Colosseum area on Friday evening.
160,000 without power
This was followed by further damage to a back-up cable north of Harlin late Sunday as well as power outages.
Meanwhile, Energex spokesman Nathan Hatch told the ABC that in the early hours on Monday 160,000 properties were still without power, down from 230,000 on Sunday night.
But he said it could take up to 48 hours before power was returned to some homes.
"As soon as it gets light our crews will really get out there and restore as much power as they possibly can, safely of course," he said.
"The weather has been so extreme. There's been flooded rivers, trees across roads, it could be quite a while ... We'll know a lot more once it's light."
Emergency numbers for northern and central Queensland:
Cairns 4030 7000
Mareeba 4030 3340
Townsville 4750 5581 or 4750 5583
Mt Isa 4744 1111 or 4744 1808
Mackay 4968 3530
Gladstone 4971 3222
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