Amid the New South Wales bushfire crisis, a debate is underway on whether climate change will make bushfires more regular and intense.
Whatever the outcome of the debate, there's no doubt that the crisis marks an early start to this year's bushfire season.
And experts say Australians should certainly be making earlier preparations for the possibility of serious fires.
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The Bureau of Meteorology outlook until the end of this year predicts warmer than average conditions across most of Australia.
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And so too authorities are predicting parts of the country will have above-normal fire activity.
David Bowman is a professor of environmental change at the University of Tasmania.
He says generally the hotter it gets, the worse the fire season.
"If you have a strong enough heatwave you can dry fuels down and then you hit catastrophic fire weather, very high temperatures, very strong winds, you've got pre-dried fuels, you can have catastrophic fire weather. The second reason is that as you get more warm seasons, you get longer fire seasons, earlier starts."
Former New South Wales Rural Fire Service commissioner Phil Koperberg says throughout the years, the typical fire season has started in November/December.
But he has told the ABC, it's all changing.
"We've seen serious fires in 1952, 57 and I could name every one of them right through to 1994, 97 and they were major, major fires but never before have we lost property in October, which is indicitive of the seasonal change which is clearly taking place."
Professor of environmental change at the University of Tasmania, David Bowman says the earlier start to the fire season has important implications.
As we are seeing in New South Wales, a big start to the fire season in September. What we are worried about is that it leads up, because it's warmer conditions, we will see more total fire ban days, more extreme fire weather and possibly a couple of really catastrophic fire days. That's when bad things are going to happen."
Stewart Ellis is the Chief Executive of the Australasian Fire and Emergency Services Authorities Council.
He says many Austrailans don't understand what bushfires are capable of and how fast they can travel.
And he says it's critical that fire danger warnings are heeded.
"By far the safest way to avoid being at risk is not to be exposed and that means not being in a bushland environment or even on the edge of an urban environment in high fire danger days."
Stewart Ellis acknowledges that newly-arrived migrants and refugees may have difficulty understanding the threats from Australian bushfires.
He says efforts need to be made to make sure they are aware of the warning systems.
"Australia now has a national system both for fire danger ratings, which is a prediction of the fire behaviour on any given day over the summer and also a three phased bushfire warning system. It's really those to measures which would be most critical for migrants to understand in order to avoid placing themselves at risk."
