CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian authorities began evacuating thousands of people threatened by flooding Friday after days of torrential rain left one man dead and inundated large parts of the country's eastern coast.
Residents in Lismore, in northern New South Wales state, were asked to evacuate homes as rising floodwaters in the town of 27,000 were expected to peak at more than 10.4 metres (33 feet) by mid-morning, threatening protective levy banks.
"The result of that damage is untold at the moment. We don't know what the result of all this will be," Lismore MP Thomas George told state radio.
The flooding follows days of rain and cyclonic winds which have battered southern Queensland state and northern NSW, killing one man and trapping hundreds of people as roads were cut, forcing authorities to use helicopters to rescue some.
The storms left 16,000 people without power.
Rivers burst banks at the towns of Murwillumbah, Tweed Heads and Grafton, although major coal-mining operations to the north and west in Queensland were unaffected.
Further south, the Bellinger River was expected to peak at more than 8 metres, with more than 3,000 people isolated in the towns of Thora, Darkwood and Bellingen.
In south-east Queensland, hundreds of roads remained cut on Friday, with homes flooded and industrial suburbs in the popular tourist beach area transformed into canals.
While the rain had mostly moved south Friday, a massive clean-up operation in the state continued as beaches were swamped with huge waves and high tides.
(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Alex Richardson)