Last updated
No active fire incidents are being reported in the Southern Highlands right now.
Official agency feeds, as at 18 October 2026 at 7:54 pm AEDT. Planned burns excluded. Counted within 40 km of the area the map opens on.
The Southern Highlands sit on the sandstone plateau south-west of Sydney — historic towns among bushland, national parks and steep river gorges. Hipponics Firewatch plots current fires and warnings from the NSW Rural Fire Service across the district — Bowral, Mittagong, Moss Vale, Bundanoon and Robertson — alongside satellite hotspots and live conditions.
Open the live Southern Highlands fire map →The Southern Highlands border vast, rugged bushland — Morton National Park and the Nattai and Wollondilly wilderness — that carries heavy fuel loads. During the 2019–20 Black Summer, the Green Wattle Creek and Morton fires burned for weeks on the region’s fringes, threatening towns including Bundanoon and Balmoral. Sandstone gully country, long dry spells and towns backing onto national park mean fires can run hard toward the highland communities. Hipponics Firewatch is a situational-awareness tool, not a replacement for official warnings.
Looking wider? See the full New South Wales bushfire map for fires and warnings across the whole state.
View live fires in the Southern Highlands →Current major bushfires in Australia · Warning levels and fire status explained