National holiday road toll climbs to 17

Ten deaths on Australian roads on Christmas Day have brought the holiday road to 17.

In far north Queensland, a 46-year-old man died when a vehicle travelling along the Gillies Highway at Gordonvale veered into a rock face and down the Mulgrave River embankment into the river after 7.30pm (AEST).

The 78-year-old female driver was taken to Cairns Hospital for medical treatment.

Earlier, a 17-year-old girl, believed to be from Victoria, died after the motorbike she was a passenger on crashed on Halliday Bay Road at Halliday Bay, in the Whitsundays, about 1.20pm (AEST).

The male rider of the motorbike was taken to hospital with serious but non-life threatening leg and chest injuries.

Queensland’s holiday road toll now stands at five.

In Sydney, a 64-year-old woman died after the car she was a rear-seat passenger in collided with a sedan and hit a power pole on the Princes Highway at Blakehurst.

She was treated at the scene of the accident shortly before midday (AEDT), but died later in St George Hospital.

In another Christmas Day accident in NSW, two people were fatally injured when their car veered off the road and smashed into a steel guard rail in Tweed Heads on the far north coast.

The male driver, 49, died at the scene, while his female passenger, 50, died later in Tweed Heads Hospital.

Several hours later, at about 10.30am (AEDT), a man in his 20s died when his car crashed into a tree near Tamworth in northern NSW.

The four Christmas Day fatalities took the NSW road toll for the Christmas period to five.

In Victoria, two passengers died on the Great Ocean Road on Sunday afternoon, after their car careered into a tree.

The driver suffered shoulder and abdominal injuries and was taken to Colac Hospital in a stable condition.

The deaths brought the Victorian road toll for the Christmas holiday period to three.

In South Australia, a 29-year-old driver was killed in a car rollover on Christmas Day just four kilometres from his Kangaroo Island home, taking the state’s holiday road toll to two.

In the Northern Territory, the first road death for the Christmas season was a 37-year-old man who was struck by a road train near Elliot, about half-way between Darwin and Alice Springs, early on Christmas Day.

In Western Australia the road toll remains at one.

There have been no fatalities in Tasmania or the ACT.

(EDS: The national road toll period runs from 0001 December 23, 2011 until 2359 January 3, 2012, local times, in line with the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Board.)

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