These Bushfires are not unusual in Australia.

this thread started in 2009 because of a similar bushfire season, we another bad year in 2012 along with other bad bushfire seasons before and after those.

One of the worst bushfire seasons in my living memory was in 1994, where Sydney was completely surounded by Bushfires and all major highways except for one was cut, along with bushfires within Sydney itself. Along with much of the NSW mountain and coastal regions. I spent a couple of days fighting one of the major fires in the south of the city. Luckily there was only a few lives lost and the number of homes destroyed limited.

I'm reliable told that Australia's worst Bushfires were in 1938/9 where nearly all of Eastern Victoria was burn along with parts of NSW and South Australia, 100's of towns and farms were destoryed.

The reason we are having such a bad fire season is due to a few causes, the primary is a extended drought, large amounts of dry undergrouth, lack of fuel reduction burns, a dryer east coast (there was snow falling in the Australian Alps last week), weather patterns in the off Antarctica, (that causing both Australia's and Africa's droughts) along with a weak weather patten in the Pacific.