Whisked to safety by friends as floodwaters encroached on his home, Ken Shambrook shook his head sadly as he floated past a submerged home on the Quay Street riverfront.

"Look at that, make you cry that does, eh," he said, gesturing at water lapping at windows.

"A lot of houses for sale down here now that will never, never sell."

Almost 10 metres high, the muddy waters have reduced the once picturesque Fitzroy riverfront of the tough farming town to a delta seething with snakes, crocodiles and debris.

Shambrook's home is not yet flooded but one of about 200 cut off by the surging waters at suburban Depot Hill. Emergency officials advised him to evacuate but, explained wife Sandy, "We said no way, we're not leaving.

"We've been there just four months and we thought, 'We're pretty stocked up, we'll be right'," she told AFP.

But tensions are high in the Rockhampton suburbs amid fears of lootings, and supplies at the local shop have dwindled, prompting the couple to have second thoughts.

"I said to him, 'We've got to get out of here.' We're going to stay with my sister for the night. I'm a bit worried about my house but I've left all the lights and the radio on. I just hope they don't cut the power."

Lifelong friend Rick Sherrington came to their rescue in his small fishing boat, now the only way to navigate Rockhampton's surging riverfront area and get supplies and news to isolated streets, some of which are blacked out.

Deadly brown snakes skim through the water like eels, angrily flushed from their nests in the height of mating season and seeking refuge in deserted homes. Tadpoles and noxious cane toads teem in the muck, which is already running with sewage from swamped septic tanks.

Considered the gateway to Australia's crocodile country, the man-eating reptiles have been spotted in Rockhampton too, rumoured to have devoured a dog in the churning Fitzroy River and stalked one police patrol.

Bewildered cows have even been sighted bobbing down the fast-moving Fitzroy, swept far from their paddocks by the deluge. Animal protection group RSPCA says there are at least 15 missing.

Emergency crews are working round the clock to ferry people to safety, including pregnant women in ill-timed labour and "dogs, cats and babies", explains emergency chief Scott Mahaffey. Police wade through chest-height waters to knock on the doors of homes at risk.

Though homes here are built on stilts some metres from the ground, sandbags have been piled on the top steps of most residences and along shopfronts hoping to be spared when the Fitzroy peaks at or above 9.4 metres on Wednesday.

Major highways into the town have been reduced to silty rapids, with the grazing district's famous bull statues slowly disappearing and "Road Subject to Flooding" signs near-swallowed by the waves.

One enterprising publican is serving beer to customers who stop in by boat at his renamed "Fitzroy Float-el", which promises "cold beer, great river views", though it is half underwater.

Even the nearby "Swamp Store" fast food restaurant is finally living up to its name, jokes Sherrington.

Commerce is steady at the Pioneer Hotel, just a few blocks back from the river, with locals loading their boats with cartons of beer and fresh pizzas or wading across to the flooded steps for an ale and chat.

"Where there's a will, there's a way," jokes railway worker Brian "Moose" Malone, hoisting his glass. "Nothing you can do about it, it's a force of nature."

Proprietor Suzanne Miller has waters lapping at her door and has already fought off one attempt to have her power shut off and doors closed.

"You've got to keep your business open as long as you can, 'cause people need you," Miller said. "We're selling cheap food, stews, rice. They've lost a heap already, some people, and they can't afford to pay more."

About 400 homes are expected to be flooded by the time waters recede, which could be as long as a fortnight from now.

Most locals think the deluges of 1991, 1954 and 1918 were worse than this, but Mahaffey says it is the first time the Fitzroy basin's four rivers have all flooded into Rockhampton at once and there is no telling what may unfold.

"If it comes in slow it won't be so bad, but if by chance it all comes in together," said Mahaffey with a shrug. "There's a lot of unknowns."

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