Wedding ruined as guests shelter in shed flattened in wild storm

Sunday, 2 November 2025 18:50

Descending on what was supposed to a be a happy couple's best day of their lives, a monster storm of hail, wind, lightning and torrential rain pummelled straight into a country wedding.

The clean-up has begun after destructive storms tore through parts of Queensland, ripping the roof off a wedding venue and causing chaos at a school fete.

The south-east copped more wild weather last night from "very dangerous thunderstorms" that sent down giant hail and threatened destructive winds.

Hail measuring seven and eight centimetres was recorded west of Brisbane less than 24 hours after storms wreaked havoc on one couple's wedding day.

Descending on what was supposed to a be a happy couple's best day of their lives, a monster storm of hail, wind, lightning and torrential rain pummelled straight into a country wedding on Saturday night.

Wedding guest Maddison Hogarth said it "went from zero to 100 really, really quickly".

A total of 200 nervous guests took shelter from what they say felt like a tornado inside a shed in Camboon in the shire of Banana, inland from Bundaberg.

"There was a lot of fear, a lot of crying, a lot of screaming," Hogarth said.

But the group soon realised it wouldn't hold.

"One of my girlfriends, she had her little baby with her, she made the call to bunker under a steel table because she was so scared," an emotional Hogarth said.

Wedding guest Maddison Hogarth said it "went from zero to 100 really, really quickly".

"We had people in cold rooms, we had to put kids in cold rooms. I've got goosebumps, it was pretty hard."

The building was flattened with people still inside but somehow nobody was seriously injured.

"It was insane, very, very chaotic and very scary," she said

Further south residents in Esk, north-west of Brisbane, were forced to hunker down from mammoth hail.

A massive supercell thunderstorm has hammered parts of Queensland, unleashing giant hail, fierce winds and lightning

Isabelle Drake barely escaped the line of fire at Esk State School's fair.

Her partner Caleb Ballard's injuries are too graphic to show, but he's smiling through the pain.

"I have quite a few welts and bruises along my back and my right hand is pretty swollen." he said.

"It was pretty nuts."

Nine people were treated for injuries despite severe storm warnings issued days in advance.

Nearby homes were also in the firing line.

"It literally felt like a tornado and I haven't been in a tornado, but the noise and the destruction was terrible," Anne Petersen said.

Storms continue across Queensland

More massive hail, this time up to eight centimetres, hit parts of the state yesterday and well into the night.

The Bureau of Meteorology said hail measuring seven and eight centimetres in the rural areas such as Yarraman and Googa Creek – near Toowoomba, west of Brisbane – and further north in Kingaroy and Wattle Camp.

A powerful downpour in the Scenic Rim region west of the Gold Coast dropped 56 millimetres of rain on the locality of Coulson in just one hour.

As night fell, the bureau warned a "very dangerous thunderstorm" was west of the Sunshine coast and surging north from Blackbutt towards Nanango.

It was "likely to produce large, possibly giant hailstones, damaging, locally destructive winds and heavy, locally intense rainfall that may lead to dangerous and life-threatening flash flooding".

By 10pm (11pm AEDT), storms near Beaudesert were heading for Nerang and Southport.

The severe thunderstorm warning was cancelled about 11.30pm (12.30am today AEDT).

A severe thunderstorm warning issued for parts of the Central Highlands and Coalfields was cancelled.

The storms weren't expected to ease until Tuesday.