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Australia's military is helping the search for dozens of people missing in the country's devastating floods.
At least 11 people are known to have died and 77 are missing after torrents of water tore through Queensland state's Lockyer Valley.
Emergency services have plucked more than 40 people from houses isolated overnight.
Some 6,500 residents living in Brisbane, the country's third largest city, are being urged to evacuate their homes with more rain predicted to fall in coming days.
Australia's prime minister Julia Gillard has warned the death toll is likely to rise.
"The nation does need to brace itself for the fact that the death toll as a result of yesterday's flash flooding and walls of water, is likely to rise," she said.
A freak storm saw 6in (15cm) of rain fall in half an hour near Toowoomba, creating a wall of water 26ft high in some places that swept through the city.
Cars and houses were washed away by what one official described as an "inland tsunami".
Federal MP Ian MacFarlane told Sky News: "I've lived in Toowoomba for 20 years but I've never seen anything like this."
He said the deluge had "left an incredible trail of devastation" that would cost the city of Toowoomba alone "hundreds of millions of dollars".
The water is now spreading out as it heads towards Brisbane.
Some areas of Queensland received more than 13in of rain in 24 hours, according to meteorologists.
The Queensland premier, Anna Bligh, described the latest deluge as "without a doubt our darkest hour of the last two weeks".
Ms Bligh told Australia's Nine Network: "We have every possible available resource deployed into this region to search for those people that we know are missing.
"This is going to be, I think, a very grim day."
She said there were grave fears for 18 of the 77 people missing.
Eastern Australia has received several weeks of unusually heavy rain triggered by the La Nina weather event.
The saturated ground has contributed to the scale of the flooding, scientists say.
Queensland has been hit by the worst flooding in decades and 200,000 people are said to have been affected.
State officials have put the cost of the disaster so far at about £3.1bn.
SKYNEWS
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