Australia was suffering severe drought for many years until 2010. There was always fear of brush fire getting out of control (similar to California's wild fires) and there were water restrictions in many cities. After persistent conditions like that, flooding was unthinkable.
Not really - El Nino cycles followed by La Nina mean that drought followed by flood is a common theme along the East coast of Australia. One of the more patriotic pieces of poetry in Australia (My Country, Dorothea Mackellar) even refers the "droughts and flooding rains".
Australians also always have bushfire risk - it is just part and parcel of the native vegetation, and fire mitigation techniques only go so far (see the bad Canberra fires of 2003 or the disastrous Victorian fires in 2009).
