Australia weather: Melbourne, Sydney Brisbane rain bomb chaos as residents urged to evacuate homes

Large parts of Australia will be hit with a torrential downpour as residents across Victoria are urged to evacuated their homes as floodwaters continue to rise. 

More than 200 properties in Rochester, in central Victoria, are expected to be flooded when the swollen Campaspe River peaks early on Friday morning. 

Rochester residents have been told to evacuate immediately as flood levels not seen for more than a decade threaten to engulf their homes.  

Forecasters have predicted the Goulburn River will peak on Thursday afternoon as the town battles its worst flood event since the 1970s.

Residents in low-lying areas of Lake Eildon have also been told to relocate as floodwaters encroach on bridges, homes and parks in the town of Bendigo. 

The Bureau of Meteorology said it would watch Seymour carefully on Thursday with river levels expected to exceed the town’s major level of seven metres.

Seymour has been cut off from a major highway, with residents planning to evacuate their homes urged to leave as soon as possible.

Fears remain for Rochester, a town about 180km north of Melbourne, as the swollen Campaspe River is expected to peak early on Friday morning. 

More than 300 homes are expected to be inundated with floodwaters as locals prepare thousands of sandbags . 

In Echuca, residents have been told to boil their water before they drink it after stormwater contaminated the town’s water storage tanks. 

The local stadium has been converted into an evacuation shelter for residents in nearby communities, such as Rochester, who need to leave their homes. 

Meanwhile in NSW, hundreds of people have been told to evacuate Forbes in central western NSW before major flooding hits the area with the SES urging people to leave the town before 8pm on Thursday.

The orders affect about 250 homes as rain batters the region and moderate flooding affects Wagga Wagga after the Murrumbidgee River peaked on Thursday morning. 

Senior forecaster Jonathan How said on Thursday that Broken Hill in the far west of NSW had copped an overnight deluge.

‘They’ve now set a new record for the highest October daily rainfall record – more than 50mm overnight,’ he told the ABC. 

A search is under way for a 63-year-old man believed missing in western NSW floodwaters who was last seen on a rural property on Lachlan Valley Way at Hillston around midday on Tuesday, when he told a friend he would return shortly. 

Local police, PolAir, Police Rescue, the SES and paramedics failed to find any trace of the man on Wednesday and the search is now focused on the Riverina farm and along the Lachlan River.

Fears for his safety come after police found another man’s body trapped in his submerged ute in the state’s central west on Tuesday.

Heavy rain with six-hourly totals of 30 to 50mm will extend across southern NSW, with damaging winds in alpine areas. 

Rain will ease on Thursday night, with showers moving across the coast on Friday morning before finally moving offshore in the afternoon and evening.

Back in Victoria, residents across Victoria’s north west were smashed by rain overnight, with Kilmore residents reportedly fighting their way through raw sewage that supposedly spewed onto flooded streets. 

State Emergency Service workers in the Loddon Malley region have fielded more than 200 calls for help, with the worst yet to come.

A Goulburn Valley Water spokesman Steve Nash denied the brown muck spewing from its sewerage pipes was raw sewerage.

‘What’s happened is we’ve had a surge of stormwater into our sewer system. We had a report this morning from the public saying that there was raw sewage coming out of some man holes in an area in Kilmore,’ he told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell just before midday. 

‘We’ve inspected it and we’ve got stormwater pumping out … the inspection on site is showing that at that site that was reported it is stormwater coming out.’

Mr Nash assured the Kilmore community there was no health issues related to the discharge. ‘It is just stormwater pumping out,’ he said.

Students at St Kevin’s College have switched to remote learning amid fears the Yarra River, which flows through the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, will flood.

The school’s Heyington campus, alongside the Yarra in Toorak, has previously experienced flooding in 2005 and 2009.

Reports have emerged that The Alfred Hospital has been hit by flood waters, which have gushed into the hospital’s basement. 

Victoria’s emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp has warned the state’s flood risk won’t end after today, or even after this weekend.

Emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell  ‘we’re in this for a while’, with the state experiencing a ‘campaign flood event’.

‘There is another low developing, so we’ll see, probably, that weather next Wednesday/Thursday,’ he told Mitchell.

‘The bureau are saying we’ll continue to see this cycle over the next six to eight weeks.’

Mr Crisp urged Victorians to avoid driving today if possible.

‘If you don’t need to be on the roads today, please don’t be on the roads, because it’s not just about the floods, it’s also about the trees.’

West of Melbourne, in Point Cook, emergency workers jumped into a kayak to try and rescue a cat that had become stranded under a bridge. 

Dramatic footage captured by local news service Wyndham TV showed ‘Yumi’ the cat swimming for its life after it was eventually swept free by the flood waters. 

It’s owner managed to pull the cat to safety as it was swept down the floodwaters. 

Roads across Melbourne’s outer suburbs in the north have been swamped, causing chaos in those areas. 

Major highways, including the Calder and Midland, have been closed with more road closures expected over the coming days. 

Poor conditions make driving on major roads like the Hume Freeway, Northern Highway, Midland Highway and Calder Highway treacherous, particularly in northern areas around Seymour, Bendigo and Echuca. 

Satellite images capture a massive cloud band extending 5,000 kilometres from the Tropical Indian Ocean to continental Australia – with several states set to be affected, chief among them Victoria and Tasmania, plus southern New South Wales.

Bendigo, which has a population of more than 120,000, has been hammered by rain, recording 65.6mm in a single day compared to about 40mm in Melbourne. 

A Bureau of Meteorology spokeswoman on Thursday said some towns in Victoria’s north could expect up to 80mm of rain to fall in a day by the end of Thursday. 

In Mildura, in Victoria’s north on the border with New South Wales, house boats have been moved into the middle of the Murray River in the hope they aren’t wrecked by the rising waters. 

Meanwhile sandbagging is underway in the town of Rochester, in central Victoria, which is forecast to essentially get ‘cut in half’ should the nearby Campapse River overflow. It’s feared as many as 700 homes could be flooded. 

On Thursday, the SES warned the peak flood waters in the town were not expected to hit until Saturday. 

Authorities told a meeting of about 200 people in Rochester on Wednesday evening that the most likely scenario is the town faces a one-in-50-year flood, but under a less likely scenario it could have a one-in-200-year flood.

Locals have been told waters could rise to 115m above sea level. 

Mackay Street in the town has reportedly already seen flood waters, with the Campaspe River expected to break its banks.

Residents and businesses of Rochester have been working tirelessly to fill sandbags as the wet weather continues. 

The town was devastated by another flooding event in 2011 – the worst on record for the area.

Patients had to be evacuated from the local hospital as the Campaspe river reached record highs. 

Forecasters have warned a large band of cloud is being dragged across southeastern Australia, causing huge amounts of tropical moisture to flow over Victoria. 

That moisture will fuel a period of heavy rain that will soak Victoria until Friday morning.

Showers have already started to increase over some central and western parts of the state, with Melbourne picking up 8mm by midday on Wednesday.

It is set to get worse over the rest of the day, with wind and rain increasing as a cold front moves over the state’s western districts.

The cold front will spread further east on Thursday with central, northern and northeastern parts of the state hit by bad weather.