Flooded Queensland graziers fear they may go under financially after a once-in-a-century monsoonal deluge swamped stations killing thousands of head of cattle.

February 12, 2019

Exhausted graziers have been left with a grizzly clean-up after receding floodwaters in north Queensland left behind hundreds of thousands of rotting cattle carcasses.

But it’s not the bodies lying in swampy paddocks or the plague of vermin that may come to feed on the dead livestock that concerns them most.

It’s the massive financial impact many flooded farmers are likely to be hit with after an unprecedented two-week weather event dumped more than a year’s rain on large swathes of the state.

On Eddington Station, near Julia Creek, where about 2000 cattle died, Rachael Anderson says the loss of so many animals will affect the station’s ability to survive.

“We (won’t be able to) get loans because we’ve got nothing to borrow against, none of us have got anything left,” she told AAP.

“I can provide for my family right now. But in six months time or when the bank comes for their repayment, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

The rotten stench has well and truly set in on Ms Anderson’s station, but what farmers will do with their dead livestock is still being worked out.

“There are feral pigs that will come and eat that, there are feral cats that will come and eat that, and there will probably be a plague of them after this,” she said. 

The financial hit to farmers in the state’s northwest and the industry more broadly may not be known for weeks but it’s expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

Some rural properties remain underwater, making it hard for those graziers to get feed to their surviving animals.

The federal government has noted the problem and will provide an immediate non-gratia payment of $1 million to affected shires, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the National Press Club in Canberra.

Meanwhile, the Insurance Council of Australia has defended the behaviour of insurers in flood-ravaged Townsville amid complaints they are not paying up.

As of Monday, insurers had received 13,900 claims from Townsville, with losses estimated at $170 million.

At Groper Creek, south of Townsville, police are still searching for a 35-year-old man who disappeared in floodwaters on Friday.