People living in parts of northern Australia have been told to take shelter after a cyclone made landfall on Friday morning. Tropical Cyclone Narelle crossed the east coast of Cape York in Far North Queensland with powerful wind gusts of 220 km/h (137mph),

Residents of Coen and surrounding towns in far north Queensland spent Thursday sandbagging, stockpiling food and preparing for power outages ahead of possible category 5 storm

A tropical low has crossed the Queensland coast, bringing hundreds of millimetres of rain to some properties.

Jacob slips into the water, dragged away by the strong forming river. Reon jumps after him and both hold on to nearby rocks, pulling themselves back to safety. “We had to hold on for our lives,” Jacob says. Within minutes, the teens were stranded on a small rock island in the middle of the gorge, with raging waters surging all around them.

Far north Queensland is bracing for a possible category 3 tropical cyclone, with forecasters warning an intensifying system could smash the coastline later this week, just days after flooding inundated parts of the state.

The Bureau of Meteorology expects the tropical low off Queensland's north tropical coast will bring heavy rain today, but a cyclone watch has been cancelled.

The volatile storm in the Coral Sea is intensifying as it inches toward Queensland's far north just as the area recovers from major flooding. The system, currently a tropical low, is expected to cross north of Cooktown in the coming days then possibly re-form over the Gulf of Carpentaria and make landfall again in the Northern Territory.

Queensland is on high alert as the first tropical cyclone of the season barrels towards the coast, threatening to make landfall on Friday while the southeast braces for weekend rainfall totals up to 300mm.

“If a category 5 system crosses the coast in this location, it’ll be the first time that’s happened in over 100 years,” the Queensland premier said.