Flooding fears in Queensland

A faltering tropical cyclone Tasha crossed the far north Queensland coast between Cairns and Innisfail on Christmas morning.

The Bureau of Meteorology said the fading category one cyclone made land about 5.30am south of Cairns.

Although there have been no reports of major damage and Tasha has been downgraded to a tropical low, flooding is the major worry due to widespread rain.

Police are warning Innisfail residents to stay indoors because of fallen power lines and uprooted trees blocking roads.

A home at Mission Beach lost its roof while at Woopen Creek three people are marooned on the roof of their house but should be able to get down when water levels fall.

Meanwhile, emergency services are concerned for the welfare of a five of bushwalkers missing in two groups on Hinchinbrook Island off the coast of Cardwell.

Three hikers were due to be picked up at the north end of the island at noon on Christmas Eve, but failed to arrive.

While the other two did not registered their plans with authorities, police say.

A police spokeswoman said the island would have been hammered by Cyclone Tasha but an assessment won't be possible until the weather improves.

Senior forecaster Greg Browning said the cyclone was at the low end of the scale when it crossed between the townships of Gordonvale and Babinda.

"It's steadily weakening, the winds have dropped off significantly now that it has passed over land,"

"(But) there's still a lot of rainfall associated with the system."

"It was the weakest that a cyclone can be.

"The only gale-force winds we did observe were offshore over the water.

"Once it impacted land we haven't seen any gale-force winds there ... there probably were some localised areas that had some borderline gale force winds."

Mr Browning stressed that flooding was inevitable.

"The rain is going to be the issue," he said.

"There's areas of localised flooding to the south of Cairns.

"There's been some pretty significant rainfall figures between Cairns and north of Mackay overnight."

Meanwhile, Mr Browning said a second low pressure system in the Gulf of Carpentaria was not likely to reach tropical cyclone intensity.

"(The system) does look like it will intensify in the next few days but it depends on its movements," he said.

"It doesn't look like it will stay in the Gulf of Carpentaria long enough to develop into a tropical cyclone... but things can change between now and then."

Goldsborough Valley recorded 279mm, the next highest rainfall was Corsis with 277mm, followed by Topaz with 276mm.

Cairns received less than 100mm of rain.

Atherton Tablelands resident Bronwen Scott told AAP she expected some damage to her rainforest block property.

"It's still too windy to go outside and assess the damage, but there are very large branches lying in the garden," she said.

"The wind is still gusting strongly and there's rain, but it's nowhere near as torrential as it was earlier.

"Plenty of loud snapping and cracking sounds overnight, so I'm expecting a few trees over in the forest and probably across the road as well.

"Very heavy rain turned the back garden into a creek, but that's gone down now.

"A couple of pademelons (small marsupials) slept on the patio. It wasn't perfectly dry, but it certainly beat the forest for comfort."

Ms Scott said she would keep an eye on the nearby river.

"I'm about 500 metres from the North Johnstone River and it sounds like a motorway. Normally it's a distant murmur," she said.

State Emergency Services Crews have begun repairs and the mop-up.

An emergency services spokesman told AAP that crews were active in Gordonvale, where 16 homes had been hit by flash flooding.

He said crews were also busy at Ravenshoe, Innisfail, Atherton Tablelands and Mareeba.

He said overnight there were 417 calls to the SES across the whole state, the majority were from far north Queensland including 21 in Cairns.

Mackay had 44, Brisbane 35 and 25 for Bundaberg.

Ergon energy spokesman Mark Timmerman told AAP that power was cut to about 6000 homes in far north Queensland from about 3am (AEST).

He said the main areas affected included Gordonvale, Mission Beach, Atherton Tablelands and Mourilyan Harbour.

Power cuts are not widespread, he said.

"Crews are responding on the coast but our crews on the Tablelands at the moment are sitting tight waiting for the worst of the weather to pass, it's still very windy up there," he said.

"Just for their safety, they're waiting for that wind to die down and then they'll go out and do their assessments."

Mr Timmerman said the power outages were mainly caused by trees falling on power lines.

The State Disaster Coordinator, Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Ian Stewart was due to address the media in Brisbane on Christmas morning.

- AAP