Food, supplies flown to flood-stranded Aussie city - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110103/ap_on_re_as/as_australia_flooding
For those not sure about the size of this flood. It's the size of Texas and California combined.
BRISBANE, Australia – A military flight rushed Monday to restock an Australian city before it was cut off by floodwaters that have turned a huge swath of the Outback into a lake, while police confirmed two more deaths in the crisis.
Drenching rain that started before Christmas has flooded an area the size of France and Germany combined in northeastern Queensland state. Rivers are overflowing and at least 22 towns and cities in the farming region are inundated.
In the coastal city of Rockhampton, waters from the still-swelling Fitzroy River closed the airport and cut the main highway to the state capital of Brisbane. Scores of families abandoned their homes for relief centers on high ground.
By Monday night, floodwaters had inundated the last route into the city, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said.
"Rockhampton is now completely stranded — a town of 75,000 people — no airport, rail or road," Bligh told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Residents emptied supermarket shelves of food and bottled water in recent days as they stocked up to reduce the need to get around in waist-deep waters.
Acting Defense Minister Warren Snowdon said a C-130 military cargo plane would fly to a town north of Rockhampton on Monday carrying food, medical supplies and other items that would then be trucked to the stricken city.

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BBC News - Australia's Queensland faces 'biblical' flood

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12102126

Aerial footage shows the extent of the damage

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A senior official has described the flooding in Queensland, Australia, as a disaster of "biblical proportions".

State Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the economic impact would be severe, with huge costs compounded by lost income from mining, farming and tourism.
Rockhampton, where 77,000 people live, is the latest city bracing for impact, amid warnings of 30ft (9m) floodwaters.
More than 20 other towns have already been left cut off or flooded across an area larger than France and Germany.
The crisis has been triggered by Australia's wettest spring on record. At least six river systems across Queensland have broken their banks. The floods have affected about 200,000 people, and many have been evacuated.
"We're still directly battling floodwaters, we haven't seen the peak of the flood yet at centres like Rockhampton," said Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who toured the stricken areas.
'Huge cost'
There are concerns that damage could cost billions of Australian dollars to repair.

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Mr Fraser has had to delay a fiscal and economic review in order to account for the costs of the floods.

"In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions," he told journalists in the flood-hit town of Bundaberg.

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Australia faces huge locust plague

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Farmers across the Australian Outback have been warned of a potential explosion of locusts in the coming months, after a plague of millions of the grasshopper-like insects swept across four states earlier this month. Millions of the quick-breeding and fast-moving insects have damaged crops and caused havoc in country towns by infesting parts of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia – covering an area of approximately 500,000 square kilometres (190,000 square miles), roughly the size of Spain. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops of early sown wheat and barley as well as pastures and gardens have been eaten by the “widespread infestation” of the native Australian pests, which break out annually and are the bane of the Australian agriculture industry. However this year’s outbreak could potentially be worse than the devastating plague of 2004 “It’s been quite a few years since inland Australia has seen such good rainfall,”

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