Firefighters across southern Australia are bracing for another day of extreme fire conditions, with gusty winds and scorching temperatures expected to dominate New Year's Eve.
More than 150 bushfires continue to rage in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, as authorities confirmed more than 900 homes have been destroyed in NSW alone this bushfire season.
That number is expected to increase with rising temperatures and dry winds forecast to peak on Tuesday in some states.
In NSW, extreme fire danger is forecast for the Southern Ranges and Illawarra, while surrounding regions - including Sydney, the Hunter, the ACT and the far south coast - are set for severe fire danger.
Strong westerly winds are expected, pushing fires east and placing coastal communities under threat.
In the South Coast, a fire is burning down the main street of town Cobargo.
The NSW Rural Fire Service said bushfire-prone communities near Batemans Bay and Bega "should" move to large towns away from bushland by 8am.
Total fire bans are in place for more than half of the state's 21 fire districts including Sydney, while dozens of the state's near-100 blazes burn out of control.
In Victoria, properties are likely to have been lost in the state's east as out-of-control bushfires rapidly grew overnight due to winds and lightning strikes.
Fires have ripped through more than 200,000 hectares in Victoria's East Gippsland, it was estimated early on Tuesday morning.
But the damage is expected to be much worse, with incident controller Chris Eagle saying that lightning in the region sparked "hundreds" of new fires overnight.
"There's a lot of fire, a lot of activity, there's likely to be impact to residents because of just the sheer size - exactly how many, where they are, what that means we don't know yet," Mr Eagle said.
"The satellite took an image of some of the heat tracks, it's several hours old now, but it's probably close to at least 60 per cent larger than it was yesterday, so much, much larger and that starts right up north of Gelantipy."
By Monday evening, as temperatures soared and the fires started creating their own weather systems, about 1000 firefighters were working on the blazes.
In South Australia, cooler weather will allow stressed Country Fire Service crews to get the upper hand on a number of bushfires.
Watch and act messages remain in place for fires on Kangaroo Island and on the Eyre Peninsula after catastrophic conditions on Monday.
But there have been no reports so far of property losses at either blaze and no further losses across the Adelaide Hills fire zone where the Country Fire Service (CFS) is continuing to monitor the major blaze, which broke out 10 days ago.
More than 120 bushfires were sparked across SA on Monday, prompting the CFS to send more than 600 volunteers and 150 fire trucks into the field.
In Tasmania, authorities fear property may have been damaged or destroyed by two separate bushfires that raged on a day of record temperatures.
Blazes at Pelham in the Upper Derwent Valley and in the state's northeast near the town of Fingal sparked several emergency warnings on Monday afternoon.
They were downgraded later in the evening as a cool change and rain crossed the island.
Crews are hoping to conduct aerial patrols on Tuesday to see if any further fires were sparked by dry lightning strikes from passing thunderstorms.
Monday was likely Hobart's hottest December day on record, with the mercury reaching 40.8C in the early afternoon.
