“It’s affecting eastern Queensland as well, Townsville just had another night of heavy rain,” he told the ABC. “As you can imagine, a band from Townsville going inland through Charters Towers through the whole Flinders and Cloncurry catchment … pretty much north of that highway, everyone for the next week or so is subjected to some heavy falls.”

Boulia Mayor Rick Britton told the ABC that the rain had so far given people a reason to be optimistic after a hot, dry summer in south-west Queensland’s Channel Country.

“Some places out west of Boulia are going into drought,” he said. “All it is at the moment is good, relief rain … we need another six to seven inches out of this event.”

All Boulia Shire roads are closed but state roads remain open at this stage.

Jeff Bambrick, the owner of a pub in the country town of Kajabbi, told the ABC he had been ‘totally caught off-guard’ by the massive deluge on Saturday night.

“It’s been hectic, we thought it was over — we thought we’d got our wet season, but it’d come back with a vengeance,” he said.  “We had 163 millimetres in six hours … we were expecting about 20 millimetres.”

Mr Bambrick said he was isolated by floodwater and feared his business would be affected.

“The station people around me were getting a bit nervous because they hadn’t had enough rain, but this will certainly help them,” he told the ABC. “It’s not going to help me, however, because I can’t get customers into the pub … there’s not much we can do — we’ll just sit down on the deck and just watch the weather and see what happens with the rain.”

• Have your plans been affected by the Outback rains? Comment below.