local disaster committees met to consider evacuating people, while people who were on vacation in national parks were alerted about Rewa by a helicopter. A military training exercise that was due to take place in Shoalwater Bay had to be cancelled, with army personal evacuated to Rockhampton to avoid being cut off by flood waters. Along the coast, several ports including Gladstone were shut with large vessels told to head to sea and small vessels told to batten down and prepare for the storm. On 19 January Rewa started to affect Queensland with torrential rain and storm force windspeeds which caused some damage along the coast. However it did not make its predicted landfall near Mackay, instead it recurved to the south-southeast and came to within 100 km (60 mi) of the coast. Two men off Yeppoon's coast were rescued from a fishing trawler by an army Black Hawk helicopter after high seas damaged the trawler's propeller and snapped its heavy anchor chain, leaving it drifting helplessly in the cyclone's path. The worst affected island was Lady Elliot as it bore the brunt of the wind, while on Heron Island, several rare trees and bird rookeries were either destroyed or severely damaged. As Rewa interacted with an upper trough of low pressure on 19 January, heavy rainfall and thunderstorms were observed in parts of Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Brisbane received over in just six hours, which led to some localised flash flooding in parts of the city and four deaths. Three of the deaths were from people crashing their cars, while the other death occurred when a person went surfing Brisbane's flood water and got trapped in a storm drain. Within Brisbane, 100 homes and 20 cars were damaged by the flood waters, while a Sheffield Shield cricket match between Western Australia and Queensland was delayed, after the Gabba resembled a small lake. See also Cyclone Katrina (1998) – another erratic and long-lived tropical cyclone Hurricane John (1994) – the longest-tracked tropical cyclone on record References External links 1993–94 Australian region cyclone season 1993–94 South Pacific cyclone season Category 3 South Pacific cyclones Category 5 Australian region cyclones Tropical cyclones in Queensland Retired South Pacific cyclones Tropical cyclones in New Caledonia Tropical cyclones in New Zealand Tropical cyclones in Papua New Guinea Tropical cyclones in the Solomon Islands Tropical cyclones in Vanuatu Floods in New Zealand