Bushfire season in Australia depends on where on the continent you are and falls between July and May.
December bushfires are extremely common and there's a monster roaring in the state of Victoria right now.
One of my mates was fighting a different fire about 90km from where I'm typing this. He came off shift at 3am yesterday morning after dealing with gruelling 40°C temperatures during the day.
Right now there's a total fire ban in my state of Western Australia. There's 10 current "bushfire advice" warnings and 30 bushfires in the last three days.