Bushfires across southern Australia have so far burnt through more than 200,000 hectares (half a million acres), an area nearly three times the size of Singapore. Firefighters said on Tuesday that blazes in South Australia state had been contained.

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said on Tuesday that the crisis was not yet over, with temperatures forecast to soar back above 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) by Thursday.

"I'm very nervous about the rest of the week," Bracks told Australian radio.

In Victoria, where two people were killed when their car was engulfed by fire on Sunday and a firefighter died when the tanker he was travelling in rolled late on Monday, emergency services worked overnight to save a small tourist town from the flames.

Earlier this month several homes north of Sydney in New South Wales state and in western Victoria were destroyed by bushfires.

Australia is scarred by bushfires every summer and every few years bushfires blaze into major cities which have fingers of bushland weaving through suburbs.

In January 2004, the deadliest bushfires in 22 years killed nine people and injured dozens in South Australia. The blazes were the worst since Ash Wednesday bushfires claimed 75 lives in South Australia and Victoria in 1983.

In 2003, bushfires destroyed a slice of Australia three times the size of Britain, fuelled by one of the worst droughts in a century. Four people were killed and 530 homes destroyed when fire swept through the capital, Canberra, that year.