Heavy rainfall in Far North Queensland has sparked rescues for motorists stranded in floodwaters.
Rescuers become life savers for the 65-year-old woman stuck on top of her car at Mossman, north-west of Cairns, about 6am today.
An hour later at Redlynch in Cairns, two people in their fifties managed to escape to safety having been caught out by flash flooding after more than 200 millimetres of rain fell in just six hours.
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"Wet season rain in Queensland is always challenging, it's even more challenging when it comes on top of big rainfall and swollen catchments already," Premier David Crisafulli said.
Hundreds of kilometres south in the Central West outback town of Longreach, it's been a week-long waiting game for a major flood that's now arrived in the community of just under 4000 people.
"There's about five kilometres of an inland ocean out there coming off the Thomson River," Mayor Tony Rayner said.
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The river rose to 6.12 metres by 9am with the peak of 6.5 metres expected late today.
Many residents including the owner of the Longreach Caravan Park weren't taking any chances, sandbagging and moving furniture to higher ground having gone under water in the February 2000 disaster.
Those inundated face power and water being cut off.
The Landsborough Highway to Winton was cut off.
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"A lot of food comes up and down that highway a lot of livestock so any closure has an impact," Rayner said
But while the river's rise has been slow it's fall is expected to be relatively fast as it feeds down into Lake Eyre.
"That means there's still water going through to Bedourie and to think a community impacted by really large rain over a fortnight ago are still waiting for floodwaters to reach its peak is equally incredibly frustrating," Crisafulli said.
