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Cyclone to hit flooded Australian coast

SYDNEY: Tropical Cyclone Steve, with destructive winds up to 140 km (90 miles) an hour and flooding rains, was expected to hit the northeast Australian coast on Sunday night, exacerbating a week of flooding.

Monsoon rains have left two-thirds of the tropical state of Queensland under water and flooded large tracts of outback in New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Tropical Cyclone Steve was only 70km off the Great Barrier Reef resort town of Cairns on Sunday, said the Queensland Cyclone Warning Centre.

"Destructive winds up to 140 km an hour are expected this evening at the centre of the cyclone when it crosses the coast," said the centre in a recorded cyclone warning.

"Large waves are likely along the coast. Heavy to flood rains are expected to develop," it said.

Bob McLagan from disaster operations in Cairns said a cyclone was the last thing the flooded Queensland coast needed.

"The rain has not had a chance to get away. The land is soaked. There is nowhere for it to go," McLagan said.

Queensland's sugar cane farmers believe the floods will cost up to A$100 million (US$63 million) in lost production.

Canegrowers' general manager Ian Ballantyne said cane farmers, already reeling from low world sugar prices, were now looking at a 20 percent loss in production.

"We're heading into what is expected to be our worst year on record. We're predicting a 20 per cent loss in production which is equal to A$100 million," Ballantyne said.

Farmers in Queensland and New South Wales have reported thousands of sheep drowned in the floodwaters.

"Cattle will float up to three days in floodwaters. If they can make ground within three days, cattle are pretty right apart from very young calves and old bulls," said Keith Adams, a spokesman for the Queensland rural group Agforce.

"It's a different matter with sheep. Once their wool is waterlogged, they drown," said Adams.

In flooded New South Wales, emergency services have warned of more floodwaters flowing down rivers from Queensland.

About 3,000 sq km of the state's northwest remains under water and has been declared a disaster area.

"We won't know until probably early next week what the impact of that water will be, simply because it takes a long time to flow from Queensland into New South Wales," said New South Wales emergency services official Rick Stone.

"There are 25 households that are isolated and will remain so for a month to six weeks," Smith said.

Flooding in the Northern Territory and South Australia has cut highways and several remote communities remain isolated.

Last week monsoon rains sent waterfalls cascading down the giant Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the central Australian desert.

The South Australian department of transport has estimated the floods had caused A$4.0 million damage to the state's outback road network. "There's a lot of regions still under water but that's a conservative estimate at this stage," said department spokesman Glen Auricht.-Reuters