Queensland authorities are increasingly concerned that the border town of Goondiwindi will be the next flashpoint of the state's three-week flood disaster, with fears the Macintyre River will breach its levee.
Elderly residents have already been moved from low-lying areas of Goondiwindi and authorities say some of the town's 6000 residents may need to be evacuated.
The Macintyre River is expected to peak at least at 10.85 metres at Goondiwindi overnight on Thursday, Premier Anna Bligh told reporters on Thursday afternoon. "Goondiwindi is heading for a record flood of at least 10.85 metres, but is in fact very possibly going to be higher," Ms Bligh said.
"With a levee bank of 11m we are now very concerned and watching very carefully." She said water readings were being taken upstream from Goondiwindi at Kildonan to determine how high the record flood would be.
"We will have a six-hour window of opportunity before the waters will make their way from Kildonan to Goondiwindi later tonight," she said.
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"We already know it's going to be a record water level in Goondiwindi; the question now is whether that record will go over the edge of the levee bank."
She said the main road into the town of about 6000 people was accessible.
Mayor Graeme Scheu said the council wasn't taking any chances and had started evacuating residents of a nursing home. "It's just too close to call, we are going into a record flood, we have no data to compare this to," he told AAP.
"As a precautionary measure we have moved the elderly from Kaloma (nursing home) and the hospital."
Residents in low-lying areas have also been asked to move to higher ground, along with those living in rural areas outside the south Queensland town which are beyond the levee's protection. However, no evacuation centre has been established so far.
Mr Scheu said while the town was used to coping with floods, the current situation was difficult to predict.
"This is a very eerie flood for us because we've had no rain," he said.
"We're relying on this massive wall of water coming down the Dumaresq River and combining with water from the Upper Macintyre and it's making it very difficult to predict."
