Wildfires scorch Australia

Sydney: Australian firefighters battled nearly 100 blazes on Thursday which engulfed at least one home and put several others under threat.

More than 200 firefighters using 50 firetrucks and five aircraft fought one of the fiercest infernos at Londonderry near Australia's biggest city Sydney, where the home was destroyed.

"We've had a property there destroyed by fire in the afternoon," Rural Fire Service spokesman Anthony Clark told public radio, warning the blaze was burning "very quickly and very aggressively".

Emergency warnings were sent out by text message and landline urging residents near Gerogery in the southern border region of New South Wales state to flee their homes if safe to do so.

"We've got a lot of fire crews working to contain the fire and protect isolated rural properties in the area," Clark said, adding that a change in wind direction was expected later.

"That may cause some further challenging conditions for us. It will whip up the wind and that can also fan the fire in a new direction," he said.

More than 80 wildfires were burning in New South Wales with about a dozen out of control, fire officials said. Several blazes also flared in neighbouring Victoria, prompting separate emergency warnings there.

Australia is still recovering from February's Black Saturday fires, when 173 people died in the country's worst natural disaster of modern times.

The annual bushfire season has struck early this year, fanned by hot and dry conditions and following a decade-long drought in parts of the country.