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Rains a mixed blessing in northeastern Australia

Surging floodwaters forced scores of people to evacuate their homes in northeastern Australia yesterday, officials said, as farmers described heavy rains as a mixed blessing after years of drought.

Worst hit by the rising waters was the central Queensland town of Emerald, where people left their homes for higher ground as the swollen Nogoa River threatened to inundate parts of the town.

"There's been about 120 people who have voluntarily relocated at the moment -- that happened last night and this morning," a State Emergency Services spokeswoman said. "But it's likely that a further 250 dwellings will be voluntarily evacuated this afternoon."

Emergency workers also carried out helicopter evacuations near Emerald after workers at the Ensham coalmine, about 40km east of the town, were cut off by the rising waters.

Elsewhere, floodwaters were threatening the southwestern town of Charleville, but officials were confident they would be contained.

Queensland state premier Anna Bligh said while the focus was on the major population centers of Emerald and Charleville, there were also "many, many, many properties that have been isolated" by the rising waters.

Large parts of Australia have been hit by heavy rains in recent weeks -- including the drought affected eastern states of Queensland in the north and Victoria in the south -- raising hopes that an end to the worst dry spell in living memory could be in sight.

But Queensland farmers said the latest deluge was a mixed blessing because it came at the cost of millions of dollars in lost crops and stock.

Brett De Hayr, head of the agricultural group AgForce, said the losses from the flooding could top A$1 billion (US$876 million).

"Long-term, it is undeniably going to be extremely positive, but it's just in the nature of these things that individuals are going to have some fairly significant losses to wear for a while," he said.

Tony Rayner, an official with Queensland's Department of Primary Industries, said the benefits of the floods would eventually offset the losses.

"Generally speaking, most producers have been in long-term drought situations -- some properties have been experiencing five to seven years of below average rainfall -- so this is a good start to drought recovery," he said.

But he said follow-up rains were needed next month and in March to break the drought in Queensland.

"It's early days yet but some producers are quite optimistic that this is returning to a more traditional wet season," he said.

Wendy Craik, who heads the commission which steers the country's biggest agricultural zone, the Murray-Darling Basin, said it was not known how much water from the floods would benefit farmers further south but some would flow into the system.

Craik said recent rains in Victoria state, much of which falls within the Murray-Darling Basin, which holds 75 percent of the country's irrigated farmland, had also boosted water supplies.

"There was widespread rain last week through the Murray-Darling Basin -- with the exception of South Australia -- and in terms of dry land farmers, it's looking a lot better," she said.

"In terms of irrigators who rely on the Murray [River] ... we still have a long way to go to restore our storages. So we're not out of the woods yet," she said.
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