Above: Rodney Dowton ferries a boat load of Eastern Grey Kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) through Australian floodwaters.
Soldiers and police scoured a flood-wrecked house three times before discovering the body of an middle-aged woman in Grantham, Australia yesterday.
The situation revealed the difficulties involved in the frantic search for victims buried in mud and tangled in debris.
The official death toll rose to 18 last night when police found the body of a middle-aged man among debris near the Lockyer and Gatton creeks at Helidon-Withcott, in the devastated Lockyer Valley outside Toowoomba.
Police hold "grave fears" for 14 people who are still missing, including six-year-old Katie Schefe, whose father Selwyn, 52, was listed as dead yesterday.
"She's a darling little girl, a dear little girl," Mr Schefe's cousin, Charlie Schefe, said yesterday of Katie, who had been excited about starting Year 2 at Murphys Creek's school with his own daughter next week.
"Like most little girls, dolls are her big thing, along with everything pink or purple," Mr Schefe said. "This is such a tragedy."
Rescuers continued searching for Katie, who vanished when floodwaters engulfed the family car on Monday.
Rescuers found her mother, schoolteacher Catherine Schefe, clinging to a tree.
Above: Ann Mara uses a kayak and a rope to tow a kangaroo through floodwaters in Australia.
Catherine's twin sister Andrea -- who is married to Selwyn Schefe's brother, Wes -- yesterday said the grief-stricken woman was being cared for by her family in Toowoomba and did not want to speak about the tragedy.
Another of the victims, Jean Gurr, 88, who had cheated death after a senior citizens bus stalled in a flooded creek four days before the deadly "inland tsunami" swept through the Lockyer Valley, has been found dead in her Grantham home.
Her niece, Carolyn Evans of Canberra, had telephoned the day before the flood tore through Grantham on Monday to tell her aunt about the birth of a great-nephew.
"She said she was concerned about the river rising 100m from her house," Ms Evans said yesterday. "She was telling me she'd had a drama on Thursday, when the Blue Cross bus that picked her up to go to the community hall for a bit of lunch and bingo got caught half-way through Sandy Creek.
Above: A Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula or Phalangista vulpina) seeks shelter from the floodwaters in and overturned caravan.
"They had to be towed backwards. She said, 'All us oldies were sitting there frightened we would be swept away'.
"I'm just hoping she might have been asleep in her chair when they found her because she was in her house, which was a blessing."
Ms Evans said her aunt had been worried "about her little dog, Gretchen", who had disappeared beneath the house. "I said to her, 'Why don't you ring (your son), he'll drive down and get you', but she said, 'No, I don't want to bother him, he's got a sore back'.
"I could hear the rain on the roof when I was talking to her."
A four-year-old boy, Jesse, drowned after a torrent washed him from the arms of a swift-water rescuer near Ipswich on Monday.
Above: A snake crosses the Capricon Highway which is under floodwaters 6km south of Rockhampton, Australia.
"I wanted to blame the rescue fella, but I don't now," the boy's bereaved father told News Limited newspapers.
"It's not his fault, and they've told me he's devastated. I want to speak with him and say that to him -- that it's not his fault."
The swift-water rescuers managed to save the boy's mother and seven-year-old brother after the family's car stalled in rising waters as they fled their home in semi-rural Minden. Jesse had been due to start his preparatory year of school next week.
Police yesterday named the only Brisbane victim of the 1974-style floods as 24-year-old Van Toan Giang, who was sucked down a stormwater drain after driving to Durack to check on a family property.
A friend watched him walk 50m into moderately flowing water across Bowhill Road, where he disappeared beneath the flow.
Search teams retrieved the body of Pauline Magner, 65, whose family credits her with saving the lives of two of her grandchildren.
Ms Magner, fearing her home by the creek would flood, had sought refuge in her electrician son Matthew's house higher up the road.
When the floodwaters smashed through her son's house, she managed to put her five-year-old granddaughter Maddison onto a lounge chair, and four-year-old Jacob into the bathroom.
Both were found alive, Jacob clinging to the shower rail.
Police are still searching for the third grandchild, toddler Jessica, nearly two, who was torn from the arms of her mother, Stacy Keep.
Ms Keep's mother, Dawn Radke, 56, who lived with her, is still missing.
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