SYDNEY Gusts and torrential rain have blacked out more than 300,000 properties and swamped parts of Australia 's east coast, officials said on Sunday, with one driver confirmed dead and a dozen troops injured in the wild weather. After days hovering off the coast as a category 2 tropical cyclone and battering a 400-kilometer stretch of coastline, Alfred weakened into a tropical depression before making landfall on March 8 evening. But as the remnants of the cyclone moved inland, hundreds of