More than 1,200 people have been evacuated from Emerald Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is visiting communities suffering from unusually severe flooding in the eastern state of Queensland.
She flew into Bundaberg, where the flooding has already peaked, before heading to Rockhampton, where waters are expected to rise.
The floods have affected about 200,000 people over an area bigger than France and Germany combined, according to Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.
Some 4,000 people have been displaced.
The weather was reported to be drier on Friday, though water levels in some areas are still rising.
“This is without a doubt a tragedy on an unprecedented scale,” Ms Bligh told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“We now have 22 towns or cities that are either substantially flooded or isolated because the roads have been cut off to them.”
Ms Gillard’s first stop was in Bundaberg, which has seen its worst flooding for four decades and has been split in two by the swollen Burnett River. Waters there are now receding.
Recovery work following the floods is expected to cost billions of dollars “It’s good news that it’s going down quicker than anticipated,” she said.
She is also hoping to visit Emerald, a town of about 11,000 residents in central Queensland where waters have reached about 16m (52ft) and more than 1,200 people have been evacuated.
Helicopters including Army Black Hawks have been ferrying residents to safer locations.
Two smaller towns, Theodore and Condamine, have been completely evacuated. In Condamine some residents had been refusing to leave their houses.
Further north, Rockhampton is bracing for rising water that officials say could cut the city off by the weekend.
Recovery work following the floods is expected to cost billions of dollars.
Officials have warned of severe damage to homes, crops and livestock.
Ms Bligh said on Friday that the crisis was “a long way from over”, and that some areas could remain flooded for 10 days.
”What we have never seen is so many towns, so many communities and so many regions all affected at once,” she said.
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