Nepal, March 8 -- Australian troops were seriously injured Saturday in a major road crash while responding to ex-Cyclone Alfred, which has battered a swathe of the eastern coast and cut power to more than 330,000 properties.

The former tropical cyclone -- now downgraded to a tropical depression -- made landfall in the late evening over Bribie Island on the Queensland coastline after lingering for days offshore.

The weather system has whipped up gale-force winds that toppled trees, brought down power lines, and damaged buildings.

And it is still creating heavy rainfall, swelling rivers in parts of a 400-kilometre (250-mile) stretch of the coast straddling southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales, government forecasters said. ...