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After a near-9000km slog and more than 44 hours of brutal racing over two weeks of unforgiving desert terrain, Toby Price could only gaze forlornly at a timesheet which showed he'd lost the Dakar Rally by the cruellest of margins - just 43 seconds.

It left this teak-tough Australian motorcycle star shrugging in his own understated way: "It hurts a little bit..."

It really must have done.

For this was one of the tightest motorcycle battles the great race had witnessed in its 45 editions, with Price ending up having to give best to another former winner Kevin Benavides, with the blow not really softened by the fact the Argentine victor is his Red Bull KTM teammate.

Two-time winner Price had looked set for a hat-trick as he went into Sunday's 14th and final stage in Saudi Arabia just 12 seconds ahead of Benavides but ended up frustrated at losing the crucial seconds with a few mistakes at the 'waypoint' markers dotted over the 136km 'sprint' to the finish.

Hailed by the organisers for his gentlemanly and sporting response to losing so narrowly, the 35-year-old Price was quick to salute Benavides for his "great job".

"To be honest, I am disappointed, we've come so damn far and to fall short by such a small margin is a tough one to swallow. However, full credit to Kevin, he rode a crazy solid race and I'm really proud of the entire team effort, this Dakar has been huge" said Price.

"Disappointment ... just a little frustrated that, on the last day, they played with these 20-metre rules for the waypoints, and I had to turn back and get three of them.

"Yeah, hard to take at the moment, but at the end of the day I'm going home in one piece and we got a Dakar trophy."

Indeed, it was the sixth time in the last nine editions that Price had made the podium with his first runner's up spot to go alongside his two victories and three third-place finishes.

And in such a perilous sport, Price could also reflect that coming home to the Gold Coast unscathed was always a bonus, especially as he's had to abandon during this race twice before and his 2022 campaign featured a crash at the Morocco Rally which ended with him being evacuated by helicopter.

Price's compatriot Daniel Sanders, the race's early leader, also kept persevering to the end, despite having to ride for hours in pain with a thorn buried in his arm which will need extracting now the race is done.

The Red Bull GasGas rider from Victoria ended up a highly creditable seventh, nearly 26 minutes adrift.

Benavides, who won in 2021 with Honda, made a piece of Dakar history by being the first rider to win for two different manufacturers.

"That makes me very proud - and it's incredible to pull off the win at the end of this completely crazy Dakar, and with such a small gap."

© AAP 2023

Three people have been rescued in north Queensland after parts of the state were smashed with "life-threatening" flash flooding - and the worst is yet to come.

The three women are being treated at Proserpine Hospital after they were found clinging to a tree in floodwaters in Palm Grove, north of Mackay, on Sunday afternoon.

Rising floodwaters are causing chaos in parts of the state as a monsoon trough brings severe thunderstorms and heavy rainfall to the north coast.

The Bureau of Meteorology warns locally intense rainfall which could lead to "dangerous and life-threatening" flash flooding will continue on Monday over parts of the Herbert and Lower Burdekin and Central Coast and Whitsundays districts.

Six-hourly rainfall totals between 200 and 250mm with 24-hourly totals of up to 400mm are possible, particularly about the coast and ranges north of Mackay.

Although widespread heavy rain has eased north of Ayr, severe thunderstorms remain possible across the northeast tropics, including the Townsville area, the BOM said on Sunday.

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services urged residents to keep up to date with warnings and alerts and not to attempt to drive through floodwaters.

It was a busy weekend for emergency services, with the QFES receiving 72 calls for help in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday.

Half of those calls related to flooding, and the rest were for structural issues or trees down, a spokesman said.

© AAP 2023

At least 68 people have been killed after a domestic flight crashed in Pokhara in Nepal, with an Australian believed to be among those on board.

Hundreds of rescue workers are scouring the hillside where the Yeti Airlines flight, carrying 72 people from the capital Kathmandu, went down.

Local TV showed rescue workers scrambling around broken sections of the aircraft. Some of the ground near the crash site was scorched, with licks of flames visible.

Police said rescue workers were having difficulty reaching the site in a gorge between two hills near the tourist town's airport.

Those on the twin-engine ATR 72 aircraft included two infants and four crew members, airline spokesman Sudarshan Bartaula said.

Passengers included five Indians, four Russians and one Irish, two South Korean, one Australian, one French and one Argentine national.

The crash is Nepal's deadliest since 1992, the Aviation Safety Network database showed, when a Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A300 crashed into a hillside upon approach to Kathmandu, killing all 167 people on board.

The plane made contact with the airport from Seti Gorge at 10.50am local time on Sunday, the aviation authority said in a statement. "Then it crashed."

"Half of the plane is on the hillside," said Arun Tamu, a local resident, who said he reached the site minutes after the plane went down. "The other half has fallen into the gorge of the Seti river."

Khum Bahadur Chhetri said he watched from the roof of his house as the flight approached.

"I saw the plane trembling, moving left and right, and then suddenly its nose dived and it went into the gorge," Chhetri said, adding that local residents took two passengers to a hospital.

The government has set up a panel to investigate the cause of the crash and it is expected to report within 45 days, the finance minister, Bishnu Paudel, told reporters.

At least 309 people have died since 2000 in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal - home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Everest - where sudden weather changes can make for hazardous conditions.

The European Union has banned Nepali airlines from its airspace since 2013, citing safety concerns.

The weather was clear, said Jagannath Niroula, spokesman for Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority.

The ATR72 of European planemaker ATR is a widely used twin engine turboprop plane manufactured by a joint venture of Airbus and Italy's Leonardo.

"ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer," the company said on Twitter, adding that its first thoughts were for those affected, after having been informed of the accident.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said on Twitter the Yeti Airlines aircraft was 15 years old and equipped with an old transponder with unreliable data.

© RAW 2023