HEAVY falls across parts of Queensland and New South Wales have devastated the winter crops.
Rainfall in Queensland was centred in the south eastern corner.
Bureau of Meteorology senior climatologist Blair Trewin said 243mm fell west of Ipswich, 186mm at Gatton and 150mm to 170mm at other locations.
In northern Queensland 50mm to 100mm fell near Ingham.
Brisbane copped the brunt of the falls and a women died when the vehicle she was in swept away, east of the city.
Dr Trewin said while severe storms were not an everyday event in south eastern Queensland at this time of year, they were quite common.
Agforce grains policy director Lindsay Krieg said the harvest in Queensland was running late and he expected much of the crops to be downgraded to feed because of the rain.
He said the downgraded grains would contribute to the “massive oversupply” of feed grain in Queensland.
“I heard of someone being offered $75 a tonne yesterday,” Mr Krieg said.
Mr Krieg said about 90 per cent of the harvest was complete in central Queensland, but only 60 to 70 per cent was complete further south.
“The problem is the rain has hung around and there’s more storms coming through.”
Mr Krieg said the wheat harvest was up from 1.2 million tonnes to 1.8 million tonnes and there was 2.5 million to 3 million tonnes of sorghum harvested.
He said there was zero barley going to malt because of high screenings.
“The damage has already been done to the grain crop,” Mr Krieg said.
“It’s difficult to know how much rain the crop can handle before it’s ready to sprout.”
Mr Krieg said while much of the crop had been ready to harvest, some farmers had struggled to get headers.
“I’ve heard of 10,000 acre crops being ready to harvest but they couldn’t find a header,” he said.
Mr Krieg said the problems were compounded by a lack of on-farm storage.
“The AWB and GrainCorp storages are chokkas and people must offload it so they’re selling it directly to end-users,” he said.
He said it would be a very bad result for grain farmers, but cattle farmers would fare better.
Mr Krieg said there could be a bumper sorghum crop due to the rain, that would further compound feed grain oversupply issues.
Agforce president John Cotter said there were reports of a small number of cattle being washed away.
Mr Cotter said there was a “serious amount” of soil moved onto paddocks of lucerne west of Ipswich.
He said for some farmers, the benefit of the rain was enormous.
“For people who have finished the harvest of winter crops, the rain will be enormously valuable for summer plantings.”
In Victoria there were reasonable falls at Shepparton (56mm), Kyabram (44mm), Lake Eildon (34mm) and Dookie (32 mm).
But in other parts of the state only 5mm to 10mm fell while most of western and eastern Victoria missed out.
Cobram orchardist Ian Mcalister said it had been drizzling on his place from 4pm to 4am, but he said the rain had caused major headaches because it caused his stone fruit to split.
Dr Trewin said while little rain fell south of the ranges, there was plenty of rain forecast for that area tomorrow and Saturday.
"Southern Victoria will do well out of the next system, that will strengthen quite dramatically in the next two days," he said.
Over the border, only 0-15mm fell on southern NSW, while northern NSW received between 15mm and 50mm.
Bureau of Meteorology maps show the Grafton and Dubbo areas recorded between 50mm and 100mm.
Heavy falls were also recorded in the Northern Territory.
Small areas in the north and south recorded 150mm to 200mm, but most of the falls were between 25mm and 100mm.
