One of the most powerful storms recorded in Australia pulled houses apart and snapped power poles as it ripped across already flood-sodden Queensland state, leaving authorities relieved that no one was killed.

Officials had issued days of increasingly dire warnings, and said lives were spared because people followed instructions to flee to evacuation centres or bunker themselves at home in dozens of cities and towns in Cyclone Yasi's path on the north east coast.

Hundreds of houses were destroyed or seriously damaged, and the homes of thousands more people are barely liveable until the wreckage is cleared, officials said.

The storm was as powerful as forecasters predicted - ferocious winds up to 170mph at the core, flood-inducing rain and tidal surges that sent waves crashing ashore two blocks into seaside towns.

It wasn't as deadly as expected, although several small towns directly under Yasi's eye were devastated, hundreds of millions of dollars of banana and sugar cane crops smashed and power to more than 180,000 homes severed.

Yasi crossed the coast around midnight at the most-destructive category five rating, and the swirling storm pattern immediately began weakening once it was over land. It was still strong enough to hold a category one cyclone rating 500 miles inland late on Thursday where it was threatening to cause flooding in the Outback town of Mount Isa.

The disaster zone was north of Australia's worst flooding in decades, which swamped an area in Queensland state the size and Germany and France combined and killed 35 people during weeks of high water until last month.

But the storm added to the state's woes and is sure to add substantially to the estimated 5.6 billion Australian dollars (£3.5 billion) in damage since late November.

"We will meet the damages bill from the federal budget. It will require cutbacks in other areas, there is no point sugar-coating that," prime minister Julia Gillard said today in Canberra. The government has already announced a special tax nationwide to help pay for the earlier flooding.

Queensland premier Anna Bligh said several thousand people would be temporarily homeless due to the storm, and Red Cross Australia and local governments were working on registering people in need and finding places to house them, including among volunteers.

Emergency services minister Neil Roberts said initial assessments were that more than 280 houses were damaged in the three hardest-hit towns, and crews were unable to reach at least four others, so the tally would rise.

Emergency services workers who used chainsaws to cut their way through debris into Cardwell town on Thursday found boats laying in the streets where they had been deposited by tidal surges, Bligh said.

It will take days to make a proper assessment of the damage and fatalities could yet emerge.

"It's a long way to go before I say we've dodged any bullets," Ms Bligh said.

The main coastal highway was a slalom course of downed trees and power lines, surrounded by scenes of devastation: roofs peeled back from houses, fields of sugar cane and banana shredded and flattened, lush hillside forests stripped of every leaf.

More than 10,000 people spent the night in evacuation centres set up in shopping malls and other heavy-built locations until around lunchtime to avoid lingering dangers such as downed power lines.

In Townsville and Cairns - the two major towns that book-ended the threatened zone - evacuees emerged to streets strewn with branches and light debris such as downed street signs. Officials said no major structural damage was done, though parts of Townsville were flooded.

Smaller communities proved to be more vulnerable.

Ahead of the storm, authorities had repeatedly warned the country to expect widespread destruction and likely deaths.

"This was the worst cyclone this country has experienced, potentially, for 100 years and I think that due to very good planning, a very good response ... we've been able to keep people safe," Mr Roberts said.