There has been a trend in recent years towards the development and popularity of physically-based deterministic models. However, the application of such models is not without difficulties. This paper investigates the usefulness of a conceptual single-event model for simulating floods from catchments covering a wide variety of climatic and physiographic areas. The model has been calibrated on a group of catchments and the calibrated parameter values related to physical catchment indices. The resulting quantitative relationships are assessed with respect to their value for estimating the parameter values of the model when calibration is not possible. The results indicate that the technique is likely to provide flood estimations for medium sized catchments (5–150 km2) that are more reliable than several flood estimation methods currently in use in South Africa.