Emergency services are racing to complete clean-up jobs on the Gold Coast after Saturday's wild weather.
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A strong upper trough soaked Queensland's south-east on Saturday with some of the heaviest falls occurring in the Gold Coast hinterland before moving south into NSW.
A Queensland Fire and Emergency Services spokeswoman said on Sunday morning that while all the jobs in the Brisbane region had been cleared through, about 80 remained on the Gold Coast.
Flooding, fallen trees and damage to roofs were the most common complaints after the huge deluge.
A single housing complex at Elanora had suffered damage to 20 different properties, the spokeswoman said.
She said 10 State Emergency Service crews were currently racing to complete the jobs before sundown.
It comes after emergency service personnel received more than 1000 calls for assistance on Saturday.
The extreme system was cited as a possible cause of a horror smash near Ipswich, west of Brisbane, that claimed the life of a man and woman on Saturday morning.
Five people were also injured in a separate crash at Woodlands, south of Gatton, while there were multiple reports of cars being swept away by floodwaters.
Beaches on the Sunshine and Gold Coasts were closed because of strong winds and high seas.
- AAP
EARLIER
Clean-up crews are expecting a full day of work to clear up after wild weather drenched South-East Queensland, partially flooding several homes, sweeping away cars and possibly contributing to a double fatality on the roads.
But Queensland appeared to escape the worst of a weather system that dropped hundreds of millimetres of rains in parts and saw emergency crews scurrying to almost 1000 houses.
The rain poured down over the south-east from Friday night, dumping 270 millimetres on the Gold Coast hinterland by mid-morning, closing beaches from Coolangatta to Noosa and triggering a warning for people to stay indoors.
The day started off with tragedy when a truck appeared to jackknife outside Ipswich, colliding with a van carrying a man and a woman, paramedics said.
Both died at the scene while the truck driver was taken to Ipswich Hospital with minor injuries.
Police were investigating whether the rare winter storms played a part in the tragic crash and another that injured three people near Gatton.
Elsewhere, flash flooding covered dozens of roads in water, which most drivers mercifully chose to avoid driving through.
Key routes through Fortitude Valley and many parts of Gympie Road in Brisbane's north, along with the Bruce Highway at Carseldine, were all cut.
A rapidly rising creek at the notoriously flood-prone Toombul Shopping Centre carried two cars away, fortunately without their owners inside.
Emergency services personnel said they were mostly happy with people's preparation for and actions during the event but noted some continued to do the wrong thing.
"There are some people that are still, at this moment, driving through floodwaters," Queensland Fire and Rescue Deputy Commissioner Mark Roche said.
He urged parents to speak with children about staying away from floodwaters amid reports some were playing in dangerous areas.
More than 20,000 homes and businesses lost power throughout the day and the State Emergency Service had more than 750 calls for assistance by lunchtime.
By late afternoon that number had climbed to almost 1000, with more than 500 callouts in Brisbane alone.
SES Brisbane regional manager Steve Waddell said volunteer crews would work into the night to clear the backlog before getting up in the morning to do it all over again.
"I'd expect that a full day's work tomorrow would have the vast majority cleaned up but that's assuming we don't have more come in," he said.
Mr Wadell said many of the calls were to help with sandbagging to ward off low level flooding but he wasn't aware of any houses suffering badly from inundation.
A Brisbane City Council spokesman said about 10 properties in the region suffered some form of flooding, with low-lying areas of McDowall, Sunnybank Hills, Wooloowin and Holland Park West affected.
Residents snatched up more than 30,000 sandbags from council depots in preparation for the weather.
The rain moved from Brisbane down past the Gold Coast and into north-eastern New South Wales on Saturday afternoon, sparking an evacuation warning in Fingal Head.
Much of New South Wales remained on watch for an east-coast low to form off the coast, a potentially dangerous weather event that was thought to have contributed to the severity of an otherwise similar situation on May 1 last year, claiming five lives.
"The one difference between this event and the last one that happened in May last year was that no east coast low came to fruition here in Queensland," Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Mark Grant said.
Despite the heavy rainfall across the region, including several falls of more than 100 millimetres north of Brisbane, Seqwater said it was unlikely to have to open the gates to its major dams at Somerset, Wivenhoe or North Pine.
with AAP
