Analysts said another problem could be interruption to supplies if roads, rail or airports were cut off by heavy rainfall as the downgraded Cyclone Vance moved South and inland.

The Bureau of Meteorology's latest warning said Vance, downgraded from a maximum category five to category one, was moving South-east, with its centre expected to be near Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the goldfield.

Normandy Mining Ltd, which has a 50 per cent stakein Australia's largest gold mine, the Superpit near Kalgoorlie, said it had a month's ore stockpiled at its Finiston mill.

A spokesman said regional flooding could impact on supplies but Normandy had already switched to diesel-generated power after supply interruptions to the Goldfields gas pipeline .

"We are not impacted by energy shortages like some otherpeople in Western Australia," he said. Chalice mine was bracing itself for further disruption after unseasonal rainfall already closed production since March 15.

Chalice operations manager Mark Turner said the haulageroad from the Higginsville, 30 kilometres away was bogged.

Turner said the wet weather had cost the mine about 4,000 ounces in lost gold production so far this season, out of a planned annual production of 70-80,000 ounces. "When we re-crank the mill will depend on how much rain we get out of this cyclone, but it could be as much as two weeks," he said.

Turner said he expected a number of other operations in the goldfields area to be hit by flooding waters. "It causes you some heartache and there's added expenditure to de-water pits and repair roads but it's not huge dollars if you've got stockpiles at the mill," he said. "But if you haven'T got big stockpiles, you're in trouble."

"If they run hand-to-mouth, which a lot of little sites do these days, it brings production to a halt," hesaid. Goldfields Ltd said on Monday that heavy rain inthe eastern goldfields was preventing most of the mining companies from accessing their open pit operations.

Delta Gold said work at the Mulgarry pit near its Golden Feather mine was shut down over the weekend, and the haulage of ore from its 40 per cent owned Granny Smith mine near Laverton, North of Kalgoorlie, had stopped because of rain.

Bob Hopkins, director of mining operations at the Western Australian Mines and Energy Department, said most mining operations would have learnt much from flooding brought by Cyclone Bobby in 1995.

"Nobody is going to get caught by surprise," he said. "They have just got to see if their flood defences and drainage patterns, and their stockpiles of fuel and chemicals for the plants, are sufficient," he said. "It really is a logistics thing," Hopkins said.