Category Archives: Queensland

NSW and Qld fires: 300 new fires across NSW today and a dozen homes damaged – live

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Rural Fire Service says a firefighter has been injured in Sydney as New South Wales faces catastrophic fire conditions across greater Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra/Shoalhaven with strong winds and high temperatures. Dozens of bushfires continue to burn across Queensland and Australia’s east coast

• Catastrophic fire danger: what does it mean?
• Open thread: tell us how you’re affected by the fires
• If you are in a bushfire affected area stay tuned to your local emergency broadcaster. Full alerts can be found here for NSW and here for Queensland

I take that back, the latest update has moved it back up to nine emergency alert level fires:

In the latest update from the RFS, they’ve downgraded six of the fires, meaning there are now four emergency alert level fires.

Those are:

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More than 60 fires threaten NSW and 45 burn in Queensland – as it happened

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More than 575 NSW schools to close as conditions forecast to worsen on Tuesday, while dozens of bushfires continue to burn across Australia’s east coast. This blog is now closed

This is where we’ll leave our rolling coverage today. Guardian Australia will be covering all the developments tomorrow. Here’s what’s happened so far:

ABC Weather has published an explanation of why Tuesday is looking so bad: it’s a cold front.

“Tomorrow with the winds you’ll be seeing a more south-easterly direction,” Grace Legge, senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology, told the ABC.

Why a cold front signals disaster for fire danger https://t.co/NOr4mZ54B3 via @ABCNews pic.twitter.com/3ZrwsfqZeg

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NSW and Queensland fires: Sydney to face catastrophic fire danger for first time

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More than 130 bushfires continue to burn, with three people dead and 150 properties destroyed, and conditions set to worsen

The greater Sydney region will face catastrophic fire danger on Tuesday for the first time since the rating was introduced and fire authorities say conditions in other parts of New South Wales could also be set to worsen.

The warning was issued as more than 80 fires continued to burn in the north of the state late on Sunday.

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NSW and Queensland fires: emergency warnings for 17 fires in NSW – as it happened

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There are fears that some people are trapped in their homes in an unprecedented bushfire emergency

Ok, we’re going to leave it there for this evening. Thanks for joining us and we’ll be back in the morning with more reporting on the bushfire situation.

For information about current bushfire warnings monitor emergency websites, including www.rfs.nsw.gov.au and www.qfes.qld.gov.au.

Stranded by the fires today. Disconcerting when you watch dozens of fire trucks laden with firies rush past under lights and sirens. As a journo I know how hard the firefighters work, but on days like today, thank god for the @NSWRFS and @FRNSW #nswfires pic.twitter.com/SCGPfdmtv9

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Scores of bushfires burn out of control in NSW and Queensland as temperatures soar

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Hot and windy weather has created volatile conditions along parts of Australia’s east coast

Parts of Australia faced an unprecedented bushfire threat on Friday evening as more than 100 blazes burned across coastal New South Wales and Queensland.

Communities on NSW’s mid-north coast and the far north coast were battling the worst of the conditions, which were described by authorities as “uncharted territory” and that led to a dramatic, orange-red glow descending on the fire-threatened city of Port Macquarie.

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Bodies found in north Queensland in search for missing Townsville couple

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The woman, 32, and man, 24, were reported missing after failing to turn up to their jobs on Monday

Two bodies, believed to be a missing couple, have been found in far north Queensland.

A woman, 32, and a man, 24, both from Townsville, were reported missing in the Cairns area on Monday after failing to turn up to their respective jobs.

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To the moon and back with the eastern curlew

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Ultra-endurance athlete, aerodynamic wonder … and facing extinction. Why the bird who flies 30,000km a year needs Australia’s mudflats

• Vote for your favourite in the 2019 bird of the year poll

The ascent is vertical. Up, up and into the jet stream. If the conditions are not right up there it will come back down and wait. But if there is a good tailwind in the right direction it will begin an epic journey that will take it around the curvature of the Earth; from the Arctic Circle to the southern hemisphere.

Using the sun and stars as a compass, and navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field, recognising landmarks, the far eastern curlew will fly nonstop to the Yellow Sea, where it fuels up on the mudflats of north-east China.

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Hang-glider killed and another critical after crash near Byron Bay

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Passenger – reported to be Irish tourist, 26 – winched off cliff at Lennox Head by helicopter

One man is dead and another, believed to be an Irish tourist, is in a critical condition after a hang-gliding accident on the New South Wales north coast.

Emergency services were called to the Pat Morton lookout at Lennox Head near Byron Bay about midday on Wednesday after reports of a crash.

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Man dies after falling 10 metres from zipline in far north Queensland

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A woman was also injured when the pair fell from the flying fox at Cape Tribulation

A South Australian man has died and a woman is in hospital after they fell about 10 metres from a zipline in Queensland’s far north.

The pair were believed to have been harnessed together when they fell from the flying fox run by Jungle Surfing Canopy Tours at Cape Tribulation about 2pm on Tuesday.

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Clive Palmer company reapplies for mine four times size of Adani’s Carmichael

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Exclusive: public notice on proposal was placed in classifieds of paper in Queensland town of Emerald

A Clive Palmer-controlled company has applied for a mining lease and environmental authority to build a massive coalmine four times the size of Adani’s in the Queensland Galilee Basin.

The Galilee Coal project – formerly called China First – has not progressed since it gained federal environmental approval in late 2013.

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Wife’s harrowing 911 call as Australian man Brenton Estorffe lay dying after home invasion

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Angeleanna Estorffe tells operator ‘I think he’s really hurt’ after her husband was shot by intruders

Harrowing audio has been released of Angeleanna Estorffe struggling to tell a 911 dispatcher her Australian husband was dying after being shot by intruders in their Texas family home.

Brenton Estorffe and his wife were asleep when the intruders broke a window at the rear of their home in Katy, near Houston, just after midnight on Wednesday.

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Brisbane man who lured girl from toy section of Kmart to be sentenced

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Sterling Mervyn Free molested seven-year-old in bushland before dropping her back at North Lakes shopping centre

A 27-year-old father of two daughters faced a sentencing hearing on Tuesday for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl after stalking her in the toy section of Kmart at a shopping centre in Brisbane last year.

Sterling Mervyn Free lured the girl from the Westfield North Lakes shopping centre, molested her in bushland and dropped her back to the centre more than an hour later.

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Fossilised partial skeleton of new winged dinosaur found in Queensland

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The pterosaur, which had a four-metre wingspan, lived about 90 million years ago and was capable of crossing continents

In the heart of Queensland, palaeontologists have found the fossilised partial skeleton of a new winged dinosaur species capable of crossing continents.

The pterosaur, with a four-metre wingspan, may have lived about 90 million years ago.

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Boss of closed Gold Coast nursing home admits he wasn’t up to running facility

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The head of the Earle Haven nursing home admits failings but claims government auditors were ‘anti-Semitic’

The boss of a Gold Coast aged care facility where more than half the high-care residents were malnourished before it closed has said he is “fed up” and is getting out of aged care.

Arthur Miller admitted to a Queensland parliamentary hearing on Friday that he was not up to the task of managing the high-care facility at his Earle Haven centre, which closed suddenly on 11 July, effectively leaving 69 residents homeless.

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Australian bushwalker rescued after crawling for two days with leg ‘clean snapped in half’

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Neil Parker said he had to ‘carry his leg’ after breaking it in a six-metre fall down a waterfall at Mount Nebo, north-west of Brisbane in Queensland

A Queensland bushwalker has said he had to “carry his leg” as he crawled for two days to safety after it “clean snapped in half” in a six-metre fall down a waterfall.

Neil Parker, 54, fractured his leg and wrist in the fall on Sunday while walking by himself in Cabbage Tree Creek on Mount Nebo, north-west of Brisbane.

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‘I don’t know how we come back from this’: Australia’s big dry sucks life from once-proud towns

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Guardian Australia reports from three communities hard hit by one of the worst droughts in living memory

Australia is experiencing one of its most severe droughts on record, resulting in desperate water shortages across large parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland. Dams in some parts of western NSW have all but dried up, with rainfall levels through the winter in the lowest 10% of historical records in some areas.

The crisis in the far west of the state became unavoidable after the mass fish kills along the lower Darling River last summer, but now much bigger towns closer to the coast, including Dubbo, are also running out of water.

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Asic to decide on possible case against Clive Palmer over Queensland Nickel

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Corporate watchdog says criminal investigation is nearly complete and it is in discussions about way forward

A criminal investigation into Clive Palmer and the collapse of Queensland Nickel is nearly finished and the corporate regulator is in discussions with other government agencies about what to do next, federal parliament has been told.

“We are at the point where we are in discussions with other government agencies about the appropriate way forward,” the Australian Securities and Investments Commission commissioner, John Price, told a parliamentary committee on Friday.

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Peregian homes destroyed after ferocious bushfire rips through Sunshine Coast community

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Firefighters fear significant property losses, with scores of blazes still burning in Queensland and NSW

• Mass evacuations as bushfires threaten more homes – live updates

Hundreds of people are holed up in evacuation centres on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast as crews wait to see how many homes have been lost to a ferocious fire, while firefighters in New South Wales are still battling out-of-control fires near the border.

There are fears of significant property losses, with a destructive blaze still burning out of control at Peregian Beach and Peregian Breeze Estate, south of Noosa.

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Crews still fighting huge fires threatening Queensland and NSW towns

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About 50 fires still burning around Queensland and 60 across NSW, 21 of them uncontained

Queensland and New South Wales fire crews are still battling difficult conditions.

There are 57 fires burning around Queensland on Sunday but one at the border towns of Applethorpe and Stanthorpe and another in the Gold Coast hinterland are causing the most concern.

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Biloela Tamil family’s deportation to Sri Lanka prevented by last-minute injunction

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Peter Dutton says family of four ‘not owed protection’ after they were removed from deportation flight in Darwin thanks to court injunction

A Tamil asylum-seeker family whose deportation was halted in mid-air on Thursday night do not deserve protection from Australia, Peter Dutton has said.

The family of four were put on a non-commercial flight from Melbourne bound for Sri Lanka about 11pm on Thursday.

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