Drought blame it on the Indian Ocean dipole, page-37

That sounds about right. The Indian Ocean was not considered a factor for East Australia.

I recently downloaded the IOD and SAM. I normalised the data and inverted the SAM.

I was interested in comments made by BOM linking the Ash Wednesday fires to the similar set up.

The obvious conclusion is that the stronger Westerlies enhance the evapouration.

This was the result