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Australian firefighters have drawn breath after battling 300 fires across the state of Victoria at the weekend, but are braced for more hellish conditions later in the week.
One fire, near the regional city of Ballarat, claimed 12 properties, with another two also declared uninhabitable 30 sheds and scorched 4,600 hectares of surrounding farmland over the weekend.
The fires were fanned by a record heatwave where temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius across Victoria.
Late on Sunday, cooler weather allowed firefighters to make substantial inroads in containing a number of fires. In Melbourne, the temperature dropped from 37.2 degrees to 31.7 degrees Celsius in the space of eight minutes, as a cooler breeze arrived from the south.
Despite the reprieve, the Country Fire Authority (CFA), Australia's rural firefighting branch, will need to remain vigilant with the weather expected to turn hot again later this week.
The mercury is tipped to reach 36 degrees Celsius on Christmas Day (Friday) in Melbourne, the hottest Dec. 25 in almost 20 years.
A spokesperson for the CFA James Todd urged Victorians to remain on high alert over the Christmas period and beyond.
The forecast for Christmas Eve and Day is low 30s, a bit warmer in the northeast, Todd said in a statement on Monday.
"But we're saying to all Victorians that we're only in December -- and that means we have two more months of fire ahead of us."
Graeme Baxter from Victoria's emergency management unit, the State Control Centre (SCC), told Sky News on Monday that firefighters had earned a break albeit short over the next few days.
"It's time to draw a breath," Baxter said.
The CFA is hoping to have another major fire in the state's north, which has blackened 8,800 hectares of land near Barnawartha, under control by Monday night.
