Queensland graziers lap up deluge in state's drought-ravaged west

Updated

Heavy rain is forecast to continue in north and west Queensland into the middle of next week with the prospect delighting drought-stricken graziers in the state's west where rainfall has also exceeded expectations.

At Bernfels Station, north-west of Winton in Queensland's central-west, Ross and Tahnee Oakhill are revelling in 190mm of rain since Wednesday 9:00am to Friday 9:00am — a far cry from the 20mm which was forecast for their property.

Mr Oakhill said it was too wet to even work in the shed — a rare treat.

"It's good beer drinking weather," Mr Oakhill said.

The Oakhill family run a cattle operation and retained 500 breeders, despite incredibly dry times since December.

"Last year we had that big rain in March and that's all we had all year," he said.

"In December we were pretty buggered again feeding cattle, and we were just holding on feeding them.

"It was a gamble not selling any — feeding rather than selling — we were hoping to get half of this rain."

Ms Oakhill said the couple had only recently returned from Mr Oakhill's grandmother's funeral before the rain started.

"We talked of her hopefully getting up there and giving Hughey [God] a razzling from all of us, and seems like she just did that," Ms Oakhill said.

Rain to intensify in north-west Queensland

Speaking to ABC North Queensland in Townsville this morning, Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Doug Fraser said the rain forecast was good news for those who were looking for more rain in the west and along the coast.

"The monsoon low is very slow-moving — it's still hanging around the same sort of area around the southern Gulf country that it has been for the last week, and it looks like it's going to be there well into next week," he said.

"We are expecting to see these very heavy falls continuing into next week."

Emergency authorities said there had been no calls for help received in the Mount Isa area, but the region's emergency management coordinator Elliott Dunn said rain was set to intensify in the region over the coming days.

He said the Flinders Highway had closed and reopened twice already and he expected more road closures ahead with falls set to continue.

"What we're expecting over the weekend and coming into Sunday-Monday, we'll see that low start to consolidate so we'll see those heavier falls be more widespread," Mr Dunn said.

He said while the region had so far been incident-free, he hoped residents would continue to be safe.

"Once we have had roads closed for a number of days, we see people's frustration level build and they try to do stupid things and drive through floodwaters," he said.

"At the moment I think everyone's just happy to see it raining for once."

Topics: floods, disasters-and-accidents, weather, emergency-planning, rainfall, drought, mount-isa-4825, cloncurry-4824, winton-4735, longreach-4730, qld, australia, townsville-4810, brisbane-4000

First posted