It's just one of dozens of wildfires that have been burning across the state of New South Wales.

It's also reminiscent of the scenes that played out during the devastating bushfires in Australia last summer.

Huge swathes of land were destroyed then, and the authorities are warning Australians not to become complacent.

This time around, we cannot fall into a false sense of security.

The community out there unfortunately thinks that after the last season, we were not at risk off bushfire.

Reality is 90% of the state is still untouched by bushfire.

He's waves are not unusual in Australia at this time of year.

But with late November temperatures setting records, residents of Australia's most populous state have been asked to be extra vigilant.

The state's fire service issued a total fire ban for large areas of the state over the weekend, saying there was a very high to severe fire danger.

Residents of New South Wales will have to stay alert with high temperatures forecast in parts of the state for several days to come, and I'm joined now by Roger Maynard, a journalist based in Sydney, Australia Roger.

Can you give us a sense of the scale?

How much of Australia's east coast is currently affected by this heat wave?

But predominantly, it's part of most most parts of New South Wales.

Fires are continuing to rage across the state, although cooler winds have brought a temporary relief thio much of the much of New South Wales today.

Although for car, the meteorologists are forecasting a return to a heatwave.

Conditions tomorrow today has been a much more variable 24 degrees compared with 40 degrees over the weekend.

On those easing of conditions have allowed firefighters to take control of the many blazes scattered across New South Wales there about 50 at the moment.

But many of these are in fairly remote areas, so there have no immediate threat to human life or to property.

However, fire chiefs are saying that it's no time to be complacent.

Now they're saying 90% of New South Wales is still susceptible to fire, with a spokesman saying the past weekend was an ominous sign for both the weeks and the months ahead.

They say firefighters are on the case already.

Do you think they're better prepared this year than what we saw with last year's deadly blazes.

Well, I think they are.

They've learned a lot.

There's been a major inquiry in New South Wales earlier this year into the cause of the fires on how better toe tackle them in the future.

Um, one new strategy, which will be introduced as from tomorrow, is to send aircraft out with to every major fire accompanying the appliances, so for appliances could be directed more accurately to the source of the fire on water.

Bombing aircraft can also be flown in to attack the flames as well, because they're last summer's fires coincided with an intense period of drought, which turned much of the countryside into a tinderbox.

But over the past few months, we've seen quite a bit of rain in New South Wales and across Australia's Eastern Seaboard, which means that there's less of a chance off the ground being tinderbox dry, this time less of a chance of a major catastrophe such as we saw earlier this year.

It will certainly be hoping for the best journalist, Roger Maynard in Sydney.