Firefighters were desperately trying to stop a cluster of fast-moving blazes in southeast Australia on Tuesday, as thousands of acres of national park burned and a farming community was forced to evacuate.

Lightning strikes on Monday evening ignited several fires in the Grampians National Park, a forested mountain range about 300 kilometers west of Victoria's state capital Melbourne.

A separate fast-moving fire in Little Desert National Park in the west of the state has torn through almost 65,000 hectares in less than 24 hours, emergency services said, scorching an area almost as large as Singapore.