"We had our patio start to lift, we had fences being pushed over, trees being snapped, everything flying around," Port Hedland resident Steve Fitzgibbon told local radio.

The cyclone, which forecasters said may have been a maximum level five storm as it crossed the coast, hit a mine construction camp owned by Fortescue Metals Group, Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter said.

Authorities said one person was killed at the camp, another was killed at Indee Station cattle property and 17 injured people were airlifted to Port Hedland hospital.

The mine camp, 100 km (62 miles) south of Port Hedland, was one of three in the area, each holding around 300 people.

"Fortescue's focus is on giving every possible assistance to the emergency services and safeguarding the welfare of its workers in the Pilbara region," the company said in a statement.

Residents in Port Hedland were still sheltering on Friday morning as the storm's remnants continued to bring strong winds.

"We honestly just heard these sounds like roofs or tin flying everywhere," Port Hedland resident Peta McHardy said.

SECOND CYCLONE

A second storm, tropical cyclone Jacob, was heading towards Western Australia, but it was still far off the coast, south of Australia's remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

Category two cyclone Jacob might cross the coast on Sunday or Monday in the same region battered by cyclone George, authorities said.

Mining company BHP Billiton closed its iron ore port operations in Port Hedland, sent half its mining staff home and shut one of its key iron ore operations.

Ships in the area's iron ore ports moved to the safety of deeper waters to ride out the cyclone and await the possible arrival of category two cyclone Jacob.

The cyclones have also forced the shutdown of almost half the country's oil production, with at least 180,600 barrels per day (bpd) of offshore production shut in. Australia produced about 418,000 barrels of oil per day in 2006, according to government figures.

The Bureau of Meteorology said winds would ease through the day as cyclone George moved inland.

Cyclones are a regular feature of the Australian summer in the tropical north and the season still has another month to run. The most deadly on record was Cyclone Tracy, which killed 65 people in the northern city of Darwin in 1974.

Woodside Petroleum Ltd, Australia's largest independent oil and gas producer, shut the 100,000-bpd Cossack Pioneer field, part of the North West Shelf venture, and its nearby 7,000-bpd Legendre project.

Oil and gas producer Santos Ltd has suspended production at its 55,000-bpd Mutineer-Exeter oil field, and Chevron Corp. was shutting its Thevenard and Barrow Island fields which together produce about 8,000 barrels a day.

Rio Tinto mines about 120 million tonnes of ore in the Pilbara and BHP about 109 million tonnes, most of which is shipped to steel mills in Japan, China and elsewhere in Asia.