Sydney went ahead with its multi-million dollar New Year firework display at midnight on Tuesday, despite calls for it to be cancelled as much of Australia is devastated by wildfires.

NSW Rural Fire Service has urged holidaymakers to flee the area from Batemans Bay down to the Victoria Boarder as conditions could be as bad as New Year's Eve.

Towns are running out of fuel and water, shops are selling out of basic supplies and more fatalities are expected as fires raging across southern Australia are set to get worse by Saturday.

Authorities are preparing for conditions to worsen again by Saturday in NSW and Victoria, where thousands of properties have already been razed and at least 18 people have lost their lives.

A seven-day state of emergency has been declared in NSW, as officials warn residents and holidaymakers to flee the fire-ravaged east coast.

Satellite images taken on Saturday showed wildfires burning around East Gippsland and Kosciuszko National Park.

Stunned residents watched on as the huge fire swarmed the dry, grassy area in Sydney Olympic Park on Sunday night.

Jules Robinson has thrown her hat into the fundraiser ring in an effort to raise cash for the bushfire crisis. 

Australia's worst bushfires in living memory aren't just leaving a trail of devastation in New South Wales and Victoria. They are also threatening to push the economy into a recession.

AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver has said the bushfires engulfing Australia could wipe off up to 1 per cent of the nation's GDP growth this year - a staggering $13billion.

Elton John told a crowd of thousands he had donated $1million to help bushfire victims during his Sydney concert on Tuesday night.

Staff from New South Wales Health will help federal biosecurity staff to monitor travellers following an outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus which is believed to have spread from Wuhan.

A number of Australians have been tested for the virus which has led to 17 deaths from about 524 cases in China.

Health officials are investigating if a person has caught the deadly new coronavirus in New South Wales.

Six people in two Australian states are being tested for the deadly new coronavirus spreading from China as the global death toll rose to 26 with 844 confirmed cases.

Four people in NSW and two on the Gold Coast are being tested for the deadly new coronavirus spreading from China as the global death toll rose to 26 with 844 confirmed cases.

Dane Wheway, 25, caused a horrific crash which killed Jeremy Harvey on the M1 north of Sydney in March 2018. He was driving his Ford Ranger 'dangerously and erratically'.

Fake social media posts are claiming coronavirus is spreading in several Sydney suburbs, and is even found in Lipton ice tea.

Joel McIlroy, who could face seven years in prison if convicted of assault a young policewoman, was granted $10,000 bail in the New South Wales Supreme Court on Monday.

Two Sydney mums have been charged after a bizarre online spat over the coronavirus allegedly ended in a wild brawl.

One international student from Wuhan, who asked not to be named, said he was quizzed by officials on the way in to the airport and a group of doctors wearing masks asked him if he was unwell.

Amid the record-breaking deluge, Wahroonga on Sydney's upper north shore received 164mm of rainfall over the course of Sunday alone - compared to an average February rainfall of 117mm.

Belal Shmait, 36, from Western Sydney was sentenced to two years behind bars over his role in a violent attack of a man in Bondi Beach in 2017.

An Australian mother invented a makeup removal pad two years ago that now sells every 30 seconds around the world.

Vera Zinger was pulled over in Barangaroo on November 29 and police searched her car where they allegedly found two grams of drugs and $2,150 in cash.

New South Wales Health said the outbreak of the virus, which has infected more than 450 people nationally, had further raised demand already sitting at record highs at the end of last year.

A young mother-of-two broke down in tears at a pharmacy in Sydney's Bondi Beach on Tuesday after discovering that coronavirus hoarders had bought all of the Children's Panadol Baby Drops.

Vera Zinger, 23, was pulled over by police in Barangaroo near Sydney's CBD, on November 29 where officers allegedly found four bags containing 2kg worth of drugs and $2,150 in cash.

Dimitri Moskovich, one of Bondi's most recognisable citizens, has renewed his campaign to rid the beach of mounted police, claiming they treat the world-famous landmark as a 'horse toilet'.

NSW Health is looking into expanding testing to those even with the mildest symptoms in a bid to further flatten the curve of the deadly virus.

Dominic Grieve is one of a number of former Tories telling people to vote 'tactically' to stop Boris Johnson taking Britain out of the EU on January 31, writes DOMINIC LAWSON.

DOMINIC LAWSON: Boris Johnson is getting all the plaudits and Jeremy Corbyn all the blame. That's what you'd expect after an election in which the Conservatives gained a more crushing victory.

DOMINIC LAWSON: Florence Widdicombe opened a pack of Tesco charity Christmas cards and found on one a note from a prisoner in China declaring that he had been forced to do this work.

DOMINIC LAWSON: A lot of us feel a bit grim at this time of year. But we just get on with it. That's not so true of our near neighbours in France and Germany.

DOMINIC LAWSON: As if Labour doesn't have enough problems with alienating Britain's Jewish community, it now seems intent on becoming a hostile environment for Catholics, too.

DOMINIC LAWSON: Within days, we are told, the Government will 'decide' whether to award the Chinese firm Huawei the contract to develop and maintain this country's vital electronic network.

DOMINIC LAWSON: Lord Lucan is alive! Or so claims a building contractor called Neil Berriman. And why should we listen to Mr Berriman? Well, he is the son of the Lucan family nanny.

DOMINIC LAWSON: This was meant to be bad news, and in a way it is: Storm Ciara (easier to write than to pronounce) has swept across the United Kingdom.

DOMINIC LAWSON: Every year my sister gives me the same birthday present. Sorry, that's not fair: Nigella gives me a jumper, but each year it is one of a different colour.

DOMINIC LAWSON: So that's clear: it is absolutely unacceptable for anyone with eugenicist views to have a position of the slightest influence within British politics.

DOMINIC LAWSON: The 12th Baron Lucas inaugurated a debate asking the Government to ensure that at least half of toilet facilities in public buildings are available to women only.

DOMINIC LAWSON: The coronavirus sweeping the world can be traced back to a food market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the new strain first transferred from wildlife to humans.

DOMINIC LAWSON: Johnson said in 2007 that Mayor Larry Vaughn was the true hero of the film Jaws: it was 'laudable' that he strove to help businesses in defiance of mounting hysteria.

DOMINIC LAWSON: As so often in her 68-year reign, the Queen gets it right. In her statement to the country on meeting the challenge of the coronavirus, she did not once use the word 'war'.

DOMINIC LAWSON: The founder of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong, invented a term for 'reactionaries' in the West who made threats against his regime. He called them 'paper tigers'.

DOMINIC LAWSON: Only a certain type engages in professional point-scoring in the midst of a pandemic. But Sir Paul Nurse, the Nobel prize-winning scientist, seems to fit that bill.

DOMINIC LAWSON: This wasn't supposed to happen. The British people have responded to a draconian lockdown with good humour and fortitude.

DOMINIC LAWSON: The decision to extend the lockdown has, unsurprisingly, intensified the complaint that 'shutting down the economy will cost more lives than the coronavirus'.

DOMINIC LAWSON: How mortifying to be complimented by a representative of the totalitarian regime now in the global dock for its conduct during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Locked-in Shirley Parsons (pictured) suffered a colossal haemorrhagic stroke from a clot on her brain in 2003. But she said she is happier than before her stroke, writes DOMINIC LAWSON.