Goondiwindi, a town of 6,000 west of Brisbane, was braced for flood waters to test river levees, with the Macintyre River expected to reach record levels early Friday morning.

In its latest flood warning at 4am local time (1700GMT) the Bureau of Meteorology upgraded the threat to the town, saying waters will rise above the record 1996 peak of 10.6 metres on Friday morning.

The warning prompted the precautionary evacuation of hospitals and nursing homes, but Goondiwindi mayor Graeme Scheu said he was confident the town's flood levees would hold.

"The levee bank is designed for 11 metres. We're expecting this to hold but we are in unchartered territory," he said, according to an AAP report.

The clean-up was already under way in Brisbane, Australia's third-largest city, after water tore through the city , killing a 24-year-old man, submerging whole suburbs and turning property and infrastructure into debris.

Although the deluge failed to rise as high as predicted, at least 30,000 properties were swamped by muddy floodwaters, prompting Queensland's state premier Anna Bligh to describe the scene as a "war zone".

The same weather system which has brought destruction to Queensland was set to sweep south bringing heavy rain and powerful gusts of wind to Victoria state, according to a State Emergency Service warning.

In Brisbane shocked evacuees surveyed the damage after floods that have swept eastern Australia peaked about a metre (three feet) below feared levels around dawn on Thursday, sparing thousands more properties in the besieged river city.

A tearful Bligh said Thursday relief was tinged with despair at the damage to homes and major landmarks, as well as the scale of the "post-war" rebuilding effort ahead for the city of two million people.

"I'm grateful Mother Nature hasn't been as terrible as she could have been, but people are waking up to unbearable agony across our city today," Bligh told Sky News.

"We've seen scenes of unbelievable devastation and destruction: entire suburbs where only rooftops can be glimpsed, whole big workplaces... are completely under water.

"Whole industrial parks (and) railway stations under water, bridges, roads all closed," she added. "What I'm seeing looks more like a war zone in some places."

At a news conference later in the day, Bligh said the floodwaters had forced 3,000 people into evacuation centres around the region and warned that for some it would be a long time before they could return home.

A 24-year-old man became Brisbane's first victim, while two more bodies were found west of the city after Monday's flash floods wrecked a group of small towns.

Fifteen people have now died in the past three days and rescuers continued their gruesome and painstaking search of communities shattered by Monday's flash floods, with dozens of people unaccounted for.

The swollen Brisbane River, which runs through the centre of the Queensland state capital, was slowly beginning to recede, but the nervous city was reeling from its worst flooding since 1974.

A massive 300-metre (300-yard) stretch of a popular concrete walkway that was perched above the river was ripped from its moorings and sped down the river, before being halted by the bravery of a quick-thinking tugboat pilot.

A well-known floating restaurant was among dozens of vessels and pontoons also sent speeding down the waterway, while the downtown Suncorp Stadium resembled a giant swimming pool and the XXXX brewery was also flooded.

Central Brisbane remained a ghost town after offices ordered workers to stay away and power was cut to more than 100,000 people in the region, as a safety measure to avoid electrical fires.

Around 12,000 homes were completely flooded, some up to their roofs, and 13,700 were partly inundated with 5,000 businesses fully or partly hit, according to official estimates.

Police started round-the-clock patrols in Brisbane and nearby Ipswich to deter looters, while the Australian Medical Association warned people to stay out of floodwaters to avoid infections.

Floodwaters blamed on the La Nina weather phenomenon have turned an area twice the size of Texas into a disaster zone, crippling coal exports and tourism in the "Sunshine State" famous for the Great Barrier Reef.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook