Efforts to locate and rescue five men stranded when their ute was washed away by floodwaters in the Whitsundays have been hampered by bad weather.

January 10, 2019

Severe weather has grounded a search and rescue crew looking for five pig hunters trapped by floodwaters in the Whitsundays. 

The men, all aged in their 20s, were heading home after an overnight pig hunt when massive rains brought their ute to a halt on the only road out. 

One of the men sent a message to his mum, who told police that water was rising around the ute on Tondara Road at Bogie, west of Airlie Beach, about 8am on Thursday. 

They managed to escape the car before it was swept away but are now stranded. A helicopter has been dispatched to look for them but efforts have been hampered by bad weather. 

“Police hope to launch two vessels to search Molongal Creek for the 5 stranded men,” Queensland police tweeted on Thursday afternoon. 

“Due to communications difficulties, no contact with them has been possible for some time.”

They cannot be reached by road due to flooding caused by former cyclone Penny, now a low that dumped up to 432mm of rain in the area within eight hours on Thursday. 

A resident in Gumlu, the nearest town to where the men are trapped, says his rain gauge is overflowing the rain has been so heavy.

“They’re on a road that services some of the cattle stations out there, there’s a couple of creek crossings and they’re real low-level bridges, so if they were trying to cross they would have got swept off,” the man, who declined to give his name, told AAP.

Flood warnings remain for parts of Queensland as the ex-cyclone continues to wreak havoc with heavy rainfall.