The council's chief executive Tony Heidrich said the bulk of the industry's production would be in ruins for about a year and that the bill for infrastructure damage would also be high.

Up to 4,000 workers on Queensland's banana plantations, which produce 95 percent of the country's crop, could lose their jobs, industry officials said.

The main sugar farmers' organisation, Canegrowers, said sugar cane worth 200 million dollars had been destroyed -- about 10 percent of the country's production for the season.

Sugar prices on the international market showed a sharp spike after news of the cyclone broke.

Canegrowers general manager Ian Ballantyne said the estimate of 200 million dollars was for crops alone, and damage to infrastructure would push the figure much higher.

"Sugar mills are damaged along with bridges and roads. Cane infrastructure has been hit hard," he was quoted as saying by the national AAP news agency.

Australia's avocado industry was also hit, with the cyclone destroying fruit worth at least 15 million dollars, the industry body Avocados Australia said.

A member of parliament for the area, Bob Katter, told commercial radio he believed the cost of the cyclone, which hit hardest along the coast south of the city of Cairns, could reach a billion dollars.

Katter estimated that repairs to buildings and the electricity system would run to several hundreds of millions of dollars on top of the agricultural losses.

The independent MP visited the worst-hit town of Innisfail, where up to half the houses have lost part or all of their roofing.

"We drove through the banana fields of Australia -- 95 percent of Australia's bananas come from Tully and Innisfail -- and there was not a single solitary tree standing upright," he said.

"Then we have got the loss of the tourism industry. The tourism industry is based upon the banana pickers, the young backpackers, young glamorous sort of people. Of course it will be devastated as well," he said.

Queensland Tourism Industry Council chief executive Daniel Gschwind said the state's popular resorts, used as jumping off points for the famed Great Barrier Reef offshore, were still open for business.

"Some operators have told us there have been cancellations and they are quite distraught about this," he said.

"We don't want a second wave of damage done to those regions by everybody staying away in droves."

Prime Minister John Howard said he would visit the storm-ravaged area on Wednesday and pledged federal government assistance to cyclone victims.

"The federal government will give what is needed to get these communities back on their feet," he said. "We just need a day or two to make a proper assessment of how the money can best be spent."

related report

Troops Deployed On Australia's Cyclone-Hit Coast
by Torsten Blackwood Innisfail, Australia (AFP) Mar 22 - Australia deployed troops in its devastated northeast Tuesday after a powerful cyclone flattened hundreds of homes and vast croplands, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

More than a hundred soldiers backed by helicopters and huge Hercules C-130 transport aircraft, medical teams and field kitchens rolled into the worst-hit town of Innisfail.

"The helicopters are providing food, tarpaulins, water to outlying areas as required, and they've got medical support on board as well," Captain Al Green told AFP.

As residents lined up for clean water and sought shelter from continuing rains, officials warned of the danger of water-borne diseases after sewage and water systems were destroyed when Cyclone Larry roared through on Monday.

"The whole bloody place is blown apart ... this is going to be a long, slow recovery," Queensland state Premier Peter Beattie said during a visit to Innisfail.

Public health officials said there was a danger of outbreaks of diseases like typhoid, gastroenteritis, hepatitis A and mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever and Ross River fever in this tropical region.

"Water is a particular issue with the power outages," David Sellars, from the Tropical Population Health Unit, told national radio.

"The water treatment plants don't work and we are issuing a boiled water notice to residents to keep boiling their water," he said.

As a hard rain continued to fall on Tuesday, residents gathered around makeshift barbecues and soup kitchens in the street where food donated by local shops left without refrigeration was being provided by volunteers.

The streets were strewn with building debris, with the town hall, several schools and a church all damaged. Around half the houses in the town of 8,500 people had their roofs damaged or ripped off entirely.

Residents facing another night of darkness amid the destruction said they had been told it could be at least a week before electricity is restored.

Cyclone Larry, the most powerful storm to hit Australia in decades, battered the Queensland coast shortly after dawn Monday, destroying hundreds of homes, toppling power lines and flattening banana and sugar cane crops worth 500 million dollars (375 million US).

Some 30 people were reported to have suffered minor injuries in the cyclone, which packed winds of up to 290 kilometres (180 miles) an hour as it made landfall on a coast popular with tourists visiting the Great Barrier Reef.

Incredibly, there were no serious injuries or fatalities.

Prime Minister John Howard announced he would visit the town Wednesday after pledging quick aid for the victims, while Beattie declared a state of emergency in Innisfail.

"The federal government will give what is needed to get these communities back on their feet," Howard said. "We just need a day or two to make a proper assessment of how the money can best be spent."

US President George W. Bush, widely criticised over the slow response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans last year, telephoned Howard to offer his sympathies and support, the White House said.

Professor Tom Hardy, a cyclone expert with the Australian Maritime College, said the experience of Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people, probably helped save lives in Queensland.

"I think that the big hurricanes in New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico last year made people realise 'Oh my gosh, that can happen here'," so they took precautions or evacuated, Hardy told the Australian Associated Press.

Some 65,000 homes remained without power Tuesday night, electricity officials said, and initial efforts would be concentrated on supplying power to community welfare centres sheltering the homeless.

Authorities were keeping a wary eye on a second storm, Cyclone Wati, which could reach the Queensland coast this week.

On Wednesday morning Wati was expected to slow down and remain in offshore waters for the rest of the week, bringing gale force winds off the coast south of the area hit by Larry.

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