So am I the only Australian amazed at this?

I mean you've got this molten rock flowing through forests and the trees nearby are completely un-onfire, if you dropped some lava in an australian forest every tree for 10km would panic and burst into flames instantly.

So... the trees would spontaneously combust out of fear?

Wait, do you even have trees in Australia? I thought all you have there are giant spiders, snakes, beer and platypuses..es platypi.... the weird beaver ducks.

In LOTR the trees walked. I guess if they can do that, they can panic. You just described the Keweenaw Peninsula, where I live, minus the platypus.

So you never realized that volcanic eruptions in that tropical land are a nearly daily occurrence?

Seriously, watch this highly informative video by Scott Manley.

The spiders aren't that bad. Rather the ones up there than the ones down south.

Our spiders are great, and none of them are poisonous.

Here's one way to think of this.

In Hawaii, volcanic eruptions are a constant thing; they'er not a rare event. Therefore, any long-lived plant that would burn from being near lava would not survive there. Therefore, natural selection will determine that only plants that are capable of surviving being near lava will persist in this environment.

In Australia, the forests have not been subject to this environmental pressure, and have therefore not evolved to deal with it. In fact, if such a situation were to happen in Australia, the results might not be pretty. I could, for example, compare this to the introduction of rabbits in Australia; the life down there had evolved without any need to account for rabbits, so it fails to account for them. Then some European settler brings some rabbits over, and the results are not pretty; the rabbits breed like rabbits and become an invasive species.

I live around 13 miles away from the eruptions (not in the path of the lava.)

We are on the wet side of the island. It's a rainforest here.

Also, it's been unseasonably soggy, pouring for weeks.

So no wildfires, but man, things will certainly go up if you apply enough molten rock.

I've not been to Australia, but aren't there rainforest bits up top, like by Darwin?

No. It's amazing to see, but this is America, you can't live anywhere in this country without being in some nature death zone.

The east coast gets hurricanes (the northeast also get noreasters and blizzards in addition), the southeast and midwest get tornados and wicked thunderstorms with lightning alley. Flooding is possible along all major rivers and the oceans. Mud slides occur in the mountainous regions. The plains/midwest and west are subject to massive wildfires and earthquakes occur along our major fault lines. In Hawaii you get volcanos,along with Mount St. Helen in the state of Washington and we have one of the 3 largest volcanos in the world located in Wyoming.

Maybe flooding if you're near a river or inland lake when things start to thaw, but it really is a nice area up here otherwise. No seriously poisonous creatures or anything like that either. My biggest problems with the winter are the length more so than the actual snow amount. There are areas in the US that get hit with more snow on average that somehow still manage to have a relatively normal winter length, whereas I'm still looking at snow in my yard.

Don't worry, if it happens in Australia Russel Crowe will drop in and give it a reet good kicking.

Only if it tries to take his picture or says hello to him on the street. :P

Australia is dominated by eucalyptus which are designed to catch on fire. The oils are highly flammable and they prevent decomposition leaving a lot of dry tinder in the form of leaves and bark on the ground. It facilitates the easy spread of fire if one tree catches fire. Eucalyptus does this because that is usually how they reproduce, having seeds that only pop open in extreme heat.

Tl;dr - Fires spread easily when your forests are made up of living matchsticks.

Poisonous or not, i'd use something like that anyway. :P