By Lachlan Abbott and Alex Crowe
A third person has been confirmed to have died as a result of the wet and stormy weather that has pummelled Victoria during the festive season.
A man’s body was found in Buchan in East Gippsland after police searched flood-affected areas of the town on Wednesday afternoon. Police say they had searched the area after receiving reports the man had been camping with a woman whose body was found on Boxing Day.
The woman was found dead at the Buchan Caves Reserve after a flash flood swamped cars and forced campers to seek safety on a nearby bridge.
The High Country township recorded 64.2 millimetres of rain in 30 minutes to 4.45pm.
Once the floodwaters receded, emergency services searched the area and found a deceased woman about 6.45pm. She is yet to be formally identified.
Buchan Motel manager Kirstie Pearce said several of her rooms had been flooded and the general store in the town of about 200 people was also hit.
She said she had never seen anything like it. “We pretty much had a river running down the side of the motel.”
Pearce said the cave campgrounds were also evacuated, forcing the motel to pump up airbeds and open the manager’s office to accommodate travellers for the night.
A man also died in Caringal, near Mount Baw Baw in Victoria’s High Country, on Boxing Day after a tree branch fell on him as wild storms lashed the state.
Wild weather has caused chaos across Australia’s east coast over the Christmas break. In Queensland, storms have killed seven people, including a nine-year-old girl, whose body was found in a Brisbane stormwater drain on Tuesday night. Two women in Gympie, 180 kilometres north of Brisbane, also drowned the same evening after getting caught in a storm drain during rising floodwaters.
In Melbourne, police said a 29-year-old woman and her dog were lucky to be alive after they were rescued from the fast-running Werribee River on Tuesday.
Police and SES crew work to rescue a woman and her dog in Werribee on Boxing Day.Credit: Victoria Police
A passer-by spotted the woman holding on to a tree and her dog in the rapidly flowing waters in Werribee at about 1.30pm and alerted police.
The pair were pulled from the water more than two hours later by members of the water police, search and rescue squad, and State Emergency Service.
Gippsland was drenched as Traralgon, Morwell, Sale, Moe, Bairnsdale and Orbost residents spent much of Tuesday night under a severe thunderstorm watch-and-act alert, warning intense rainfall could lead to life-threatening flash flooding, damaging winds and large hailstones.
State Emergency Service deputy chief officer Alistair Drayton said on Wednesday morning it was now mostly a clean-up effort.
“Conditions are easing across the state now as that low-pressure system moves out to the east,” Drayton told 3AW.
The SES recorded 399 requests for assistance in the 24 hours to 8am on Wednesday – including 150 for downed trees, 107 for flooding and 29 for rescues and agency assistance jobs. Gippsland was the busiest region, registering 140 calls for help.
In western Victoria, the Avoca River in Charlton peaked at 5.90 metres on Wednesday morning in the flood-prone Loddon-Mallee town.
The Avoca catchment recorded up to 105 millimetres in the 48 hours to 9am on Boxing Day.
Residents in Elmore, a small town between Bendigo and Echuca, are still unable to drink tap water after the local water treatment plant shutdown due to an alarm fault amid intense weather on Christmas Day. A water trailer is available for locals at the base of Elmore water tower.
Flash flooding also hit Welshpool and other towns near Wilsons Promontory off the South Gippsland Highway on Tuesday. Vision posted on social media showed the Welshpool pub surrounded by floodwaters. A landslide also closed Silcocks Hill Road near Toora for about three hours.
The Macedon Ranges town of Kyneton and the Loddon Mallee community of Wedderburn were among those that experienced flooding and storm damage on one of the wettest Christmas Days on record in Victoria.
The Boxing Day Test was disrupted on day one when ominous storm clouds rolled into Melbourne from the north-east. The cricket resumed at 5.10pm and the storm cell dissipated closer to Ballarat about 3pm.
A shower or two is forecast for Melbourne on Wednesday, but only up to three millimetres of rainfall is predicted. However, the Bureau of Meteorology said there was chance of a thunderstorm.
The mercury is tipped to reach a maximum of 22 degrees.
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