"Whether it’s on a Friday afternoon and you are deciding to take that extra plumbing contract and you said you would pick up the kids, or something at my level, these are things you juggle as parents." Prime Minister Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian with RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons arriving on Sunday at the Picton Bowling Club, which is being used as a evacuation centre. Credit:Edwina PIckles The trip to Hawaii was the Prime Minister's second overseas holiday in six months after the family visited Fiji for a week in June. Mr Morrison denied that his office sought to keep the Hawaii trip under wraps, saying "I texted the leader of the Opposition about it myself", and that criticism of the apparent secrecy surrounding the holiday amounted to "point-scoring" by political opponents. "I followed the same process I had on previous occasions and no journalist raised any issues with that over the last two occasions over the last year-and-a-half," he said.

Mr Morrison on Monday visited firefighters in Ilford and an evacuation centre in Mudgee, both west of the mega-fire in Wollemi National Park. On Sunday, he apologised for any offence taken as a result of his Hawaii trip before visiting an evacuation centre and emergency control centre in the Wollondilly Shire in Sydney's south-west with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Members of the Horsley Park Rural Fire Brigade embrace while remembering their fallen comrades on Sunday. Credit:Getty Images Later, he visited the wives of the two local firefighters who were killed when their truck hit a fallen tree on Thursday night. A number of villages in the Wollondilly area were severely impacted by the Green Wattle Creek bushfire on Saturday, including Balmoral, where Ms Berejiklian said "there's not much left".

Ms Berejiklian, who visited fire-affected Blue Mountains communities on Monday, told reporters she was grateful more lives hadn't been lost after witnessing how close the fire came to Blackheath, "in what we would regard as suburbia". NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and RFS Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers visit Mount Victoria on Monday. Credit:James Brickwood Loading "We have lost eight people during this season in tragic circumstances and that toll could have been far worse. I am grateful every day we wake up and realise that people have survived a night, that we haven't had more deaths," she said. Firefighters fear as many as 100 buildings have been destroyed in the bushfires that tore through NSW under Saturday's catastrophic conditions. Elsewhere in Australia, losses from fires near Adelaide also continue to climb with 86 homes now confirmed destroyed.

Several NSW roads remain closed as work is undertaken to clear dangerous trees and fire-affected power poles. The RFS is urging people to check the status of roads they are planning to travel through via Live Traffic NSW. Endeavour Energy staff cut branches of damaged trees caused by the Green Wattle Creek fire. Credit:Kate Geraghty Fatigued firefighters to work through Christmas With 90 fires burning across the state on Monday, firefighters are taking advantage of more favourable conditions to strengthen containment lines before the weather deteriorates again on the weekend. While Christmas Day could see some rain, temperatures are forecast to head back into the 40s in parts of the state including western Sydney on Saturday and Sunday, with possible thunderstorms.

NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said firefighters are doing significant backburning in the Blue Mountains and south-western Sydney and would be hard at work through Christmas to prepare for the worsening conditions. Loading "A massive amount of work right across firegrounds the length and breadth of the state will continue throughout this Christmas-New Year period," Mr Fitzsimmons told Sunrise. "They're fatigued – physically fatigued, emotionally fatigued – but they know their communities are under threat and they're going to do all they can," he said. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese on Monday renewed his call for firefighting volunteers to be compensated for income loss from prolonged time at the firefront – whether through one-off payments, tax relief, or allowances similar to those offered to Army reservists.

"It's simply not sustainable to be a volunteer on no income for such a prolonged period of time, and the government needs to respond to that – all governments need to respond to it," Mr Albanese said, calling for COAG to be brought forward from March to deal with the issue. Loading Mr Morrison said "I don't know if compensation is the right term to use". "What is important [is] to give the fire commissioners the tools that they need to best support and raise that volunteer force as it's needed over across the firegrounds," he told reporters in Mudgee. While conditions are forecast to ease over the coming week, Mr Fitzsimmons has painted a grim picture of the longer-term weather outlook for the NSW fire season.