Australia is a fairly arid environment, and by that I mean the vast majority of it is a desert, and since we're just coming out of summer, even those areas that aren't desert are a bit parched. As a result, wildfires are quite common throughout most of the country (except the interior where there's either nothing to burn or nobody's there to see the flames). Quite a number of fires are caused by "controlled" burns, which often get out of a control. At present, Wilsons Promontory (a national park southeast of Melbourne that sticks out toward Tasmania) is ablaze - even the marshes are on fire. This too started as a controlled burn back around Easter - they were hoping for rain. It's not raining. It may be a while before the WP is once again a picturesque tourist spot. [http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=47560]
CSIRO has a little online tool for mapping wildfires in Australia [http://www.sentinel.csiro.au/mapping/viewer.htm ]. I found that if you check "hotspots by date" and enter start dates of Jan 1. and end dates of present day, it looks like the entire continent is on fire. Cool!
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Ben-
This just confirms my theory that Australia is California writ large. Most everyone lives on the coast, while the interior is mostly an empty dustbowl. Surfing is big and there's a lovely wine country. Well, that's about the extent of the theory.
Logan
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