Australia's Flood Situation Worsens

Australia's flood crisis went from bad to worse Saturday with a giant "inland sea" threatening more communities in the southeast, as officials continued the grim search for bodies in worst-hit Queensland.

Sandbagging is underway in some villages in Victoria, where weeks of floods have affected as much as one-third of the state, with swollen rivers overflowing in 75 towns and flooding some 1,770 properties.

"We know that this is the most significant flooding in the north west of Victoria since records began... about 130 years ago," a spokeswoman for the State Emergency Service told reporters.

"We are still on alert for towns in the north of the state."

Floodwaters which national broadcaster ABC described as a moving "inland sea" covering an area 90 kilometres (56 miles) long and 40 kilometres wide, were threatening towns around Swan Hill, les than 200 miles northwest of Melbourne.  The forming "inland sea" could get bigger.

"In the actual Swan Hill township itself, we are very confident that the levee system around the town is built to a very high grade and will protect the township," Mayor Greg Cruickshank told ABC radio.

But rural and outlying areas "will have significant amount of inundation through them," he said.

While thousands of people around the state have been urged to evacuate, emergency services warned that those people who choose to remain on their properties in the rural areas could be stranded by the floods.