BBC Online :
Residents in northern Queensland are surveying the damage after Cyclone Ita brought winds of up to 230km/h (140mph) to north-eastern Australia.
Some communities have been left without power, with damage to some buildings, but no casualties have been reported.
The cyclone made landfall at Cape Flattery but weakened as it travelled inland, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said.
It is the strongest storm to hit since Cyclone Yasi, which struck in 2011.
Previously classed as a category-five storm, Ita was later downgraded by the BOM to category one.
Tens of thousands of people hunkered down overnight amid warnings of severe gales, flash flooding and storm tides.
Officials say power lines and phones were knocked out by the cyclone, but there were no reports of major destruction to infrastructure.
“I am greatly relieved that at this time we’ve had no reports of either death or injury,” Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said, quoted by Reuters news agency.
He warned residents to remain inside their homes or shelters because of potential further destruction on Saturday, with wind gust up to 120km/h (74mph) and heavy rain forecast.
In Cooktown, where some 300 residents spent the night in an evacuation centre, officials said the roofs of at least two homes were ripped off and a pub was damaged in the strong winds.
“There’s a lot of vegetation on the road and we’ve unfortunately seen some buildings damaged…but there hasn’t been a lot of structural damage,” Cooktown Mayor Peter Scott told the Associated Press news agency.
