After days of torrential rains, flood waters surged into areas north of Sydney, isolating towns, swamping farms, homes and businesses and causing millions of dollars in damage.

The death toll rose to nine when police found the body of a man who died after he was swept into a storm water drain on a flooded road.

Authorities earlier found the body of a man who died when his car was swept off a highway into a swollen creek.

His wife and three young children, aged two, three and nine, who were travelling with him, also died when the road collapsed underneath them, but their bodies had been found earlier.

Although bringing much-needed rain to Sydney and towns to its north, the storms have wreaked havoc since slamming into the city and the Central Coast and Newcastle to the north on Friday.

Among the dead are a 29-year-old man crushed when a tree fell on his car near Newcastle and a couple who perished when their vehicle was swept off a bridge while crossing a flooded river in the Hunter Valley.

Officials said Newcastle looked as if it had been hit by an earthquake.

"What I saw were parts of Newcastle that resembled the kind of damage that followed the (1989) earthquake," New South Wales state premier Morris Iemma said after visiting the city.

"Construction sites and scaffolding, debris on roads, abandoned cars, homes that were damaged, trees having fallen on homes, extensive damage. It was quite disbelieving," he added.

The 1989 earthquake packed a magnitude of 5.6 and killed 13 people.

Newcastle resident Harry Gregory told The Sunday Telegraph he fled his home after his bed and fridge started to float in the flood waters.

"Everything's ruined," he said. "I have a lounge (sofa) stuck in my front fence and I have got no idea who it belongs to."

Emergency workers evacuated 400 people from their homes along the Central Coast overnight, including by boat and helicopter, and were Sunday urging some 5,000 residents in Maitland, to the north, to seek shelter away from rising flood waters.

State Emergency Services spokesman Steve Delaney said the Hunter River could peak at 11 metres (36 feet) higher than normal later in the day.

"This will meet their predictions. It won't go below. It will meet their predictions by midnight tonight," he told ABC radio.

"So there is a real, clear possibility that the levy might overtop this evening."

Meanwhile, the clean-up began in Newcastle and flood waters were receding in Singleton.

Accompanied by gale force winds, the storms have driven a massive freighter aground in Newcastle, forced the suspension of ferry services in Sydney Harbour and blacked out tens of thousands of homes.

Prime Minister John Howard said those affected by storms and flooding would be entitled to cash payments in addition to natural disaster funding offered by the state government.

"I know I speak for every Australian in saying that the country is thinking of you and we're heartbroken by the loss of lives and the tragic circumstances in which a number of people have lost their lives," he said.

"It is an immense disaster."

Maritime officials said salvage crews were hopeful that the 30,000-tonne vessel Pasha Bulker, still stranded on a Newcastle beach after running aground amid huge seas on Friday, could be refloated as violent conditions eased.

"There's every hope that a plan to safely remove the ship from the beach will be progressed pretty quickly," spokesman Neil Patchett said.

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