The weather bureau's Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre says Cyclone Larry is breaking up more quickly than expected as it tracks inland across Queensland's far north.
The Centre's Bruce Gunn says winds of 290-kilometres per hour around the storm's centre hit the town of Innisfail, south of Cairns, when Larry reached the coastline this morning.
Mr Gunn says the storm will eventually disintegrate into a rain depression as it arrives in the Northern Territory tomorrow.
"As it moves over land and through some steep terrain in the Great Dividing Range it's really starting to break up and becoming harder to track.
"But that's our projected movement, continuing a westerly track, maybe a little bit southwest, so it ends up somewhere south of the Gulf of Carpentaria as a tropical rain depression with no destructive winds to speak of."