Both reviewers and I agree that this work is interesting and fills the gap for understanding climate controls on dry-/semi-dryland phenology in Australia. The authors have done a good job in addressing two reviewers’ comments. I have a few minor points to add.
1. The abstract is too long and there are some repetitions. Please shorten it and make it more concise.
2. Regarding the duel seasonal cycle, I recommend the following paper to reconsider how to address this issue. This paper used the Fourier spectra to effectively identify how many cycles for the broad regions of Africa. As the #2 reviewer has suggested, I also think to include a spatial map to show the single/double growing season would be helpful in this case.
Guan, K., Medvigy, D., Wood, E. F., Caylor, K. K. ,Li, S. and Jeong S.J. (2014) "Deriving vegetation phenological time and trajectory information over Africa using SEVIRI daily LAI", IEEE transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 53(2),1113-1130.
3. I agree with the #2 reviewer’s comments regarding the lack of analysis for phenological timing and how climate controls it. The following paper used the similar dataset to address these issues, and authors may consider to cite it.
Guan, K., Wood, E. F., Caylor, K. K., Medvigy, D., Sheffield, J., Pan, M., Kimball, J., Xu, X and Jones, M.O. (Accepted) "Terrestrial hydrological control on vegetation phenology of African savannas and woodlands", Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences.
In my perspective, “phenology” is both magnitude and phase (or timing), and sometimes more emphasizes the latter. The authors have done a good job for magnitude (which is more related to “vegetation dynamics” used broadly), but the manuscript is relatively weak in the phase part (though I see your analysis for “peak timing”). I don’t require the authors to do extra analysis, but clearly state where your work contributes and what is needed for future work is necessary. So I suggest the authors to put more related statements in the introduction and future work section.
4. A concise conclusion section is suggested.

Dr. Broich,
I am happy with your revision, and I decide to accept your manuscript and publish as it is.
Congratulations!
Kaiyu