Near the pretty Australian hill town of Toowoomba, houses were ripped from their foundations and frightened residents clung to signs and lampposts for dear life.

Others were not so lucky. The flash flood on Monday was over in about an hour, but it left behind nine dead, scores missing and shattered communities in mourning.

"There was no warning that I heard of," bar attendant Donna Dyer, who works at Toowoomba's Irish Club Hotel, told The Australian newspaper.

"It was shocking. It was pelting rain and we heard the creek banks had burst and then all of a sudden this wall of water was rushing down the street.

"It rose so quick, and then I am watching a rainwater tank and sofas from the furniture shop floating past.

"It would have been more than chest-high because I saw the water rise around one man in the street, who was walking against the flow and it had just picked him up, but he was able to hold on to a signpost."

Among the survivors were office workers rescued from flooded buildings and a woman in nearby Murphy's Creek who clung to a sapling before being plucked to safety by a human chain, reports said.

Four people survived by hanging on to signposts at a flooded Toowoomba intersection, while one couple helped their two children into a ceiling cavity before being sucked away as rapids deluged their home.

The torrents swept through Toowoomba, in the heights of Australia's major mountain chain, the Great Dividing Range, before raging downhill through a group of nearby communities.

"It was like an ocean, there were waves. I've never seen anything like it," said Toowoomba office worker Sandra Van de Kley, according to The Australian.

Lockyer Valley mayor Steve Jones said the little town of Withcott looked like it had been hit by an "atomic bomb" or a cyclone.

"There's petrol pumps taken out and taken half-a-kilometre (a third of a mile) down the road," he said. "There's houses come off the stumps at Postman's Ridge and taken down the creek, possibly two or three."

Withcott supermarket manager Treg Cleland said his supplies were swimming in nearly a metre (three feet) of water, while three metres lapped against the outside windows.

"We had roughly about five to 10 minutes' notice that there was a wall of water coming down the range from Toowoomba," Cleland told Fairfax Radio.

"Nobody had any idea the sheer volume of water that was coming. You had to see it to believe it."

In Grantham, thought to be the worst-hit town, residents took refuge in a local school as cars bobbed through the streets and historic buildings bore the brunt of the waves.

"(There's) a fair few people in (the school), I had an elderly man come out and just give me a hug earlier, in tears. He'd lost his house," Grantham resident Christopher Field told public broadcaster ABC.

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