Devastating floods in northeastern Australia have claimed their first victim, with the body of a missing woman recovered as the surging waters continued to rise and a fresh storm loomed.
Emergency officials and police searched through the night by boat and helicopter for the 41-year-old who was swept from her car as she tried to cross a swamped causeway in the northern Gulf of Carpentaria region.
Police managed to save three children and another adult from the car but the woman disappeared before they could reach her.
"Searchers located the woman's body around 10.20am today about two kilometres from the causeway," police said.
There were fears for another man missing after his fishing boat was swamped on Saturday afternoon near Gladstone, at the centre of the floods, and witnesses reported seeing a second man swept away in the swamped city of Rockhampton.
"These waters are exceptionally fast, they're not to be trifled with and they're not to be taken lightly," said the assistant police commissioner Alistair Dawson.
A severe storm was expected to sweep through the region late today, bringing "damaging winds, very heavy rainfall, flash flooding and large hailstones" the weather bureau said, urging residents to take shelter.
Up to 200,000 people are estimated to have been hit by the floods which have left entire towns under water and cut off many more over an area the size of France and Germany combined, wreaking untold billions in damage to crops and the nation's key mining industry.
"In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions," the Queensland state treasurer Andrew Fraser told reporters in flood-hit Bundaberg on Saturday.
