Dear Poms, don’t whinge about the heat until chicks lay hard-boiled eggs & you can wash & dry your clothes at same time
DEAR Poms, I hear you’re melting over there. Forty degrees, eh? You call that hot? This is hot — 50.7C, recorded at the Western Australian coastal town of Onslow on January 14 this year. It matched the reading in remote Oodnadatta, South Australia, in 1960. In the intervening six decades there have been regular readings […]
DEAR Poms,
I hear you’re melting over there. Forty degrees, eh? You call that hot?
This is hot — 50.7C, recorded at the Western Australian coastal town of Onslow on January 14 this year.
It matched the reading in remote Oodnadatta, South Australia, in 1960.
In the intervening six decades there have been regular readings above 50C in the bush down here.
It’s even been up to 45C in the cities.
READ MORE ON HEATWAVE
Hot? Yeah, that’s getting warm.
Down here in summer, it can get so hot you can fry an egg on the road. I know, I’ve done it.
It gets so hot trains jump off twisted rails.
It gets so hot that the chickens lay hard-boiled eggs and you can wash and dry your clothes at the same time.
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It gets so hot that, well, there’s nothing else to do but go to the beach.
I see you’re being advised to work from home rather than swelter your way to and from the office.
I can imagine how tough that would be.
I was once in London when the temperature reached 29C and the place reeked!
Down in the Tube it was clear why some unkind Antipodeans make cruel comments about the art of soap-dodging.
Commuting in London in 40C sounds like something to be dodged, if you can.
Mind you, down here if anyone in authority were to proffer that advice we’d shrug and say: “Yeah, nah.
“Why don’t we just chuck a sickie . . . call the boss and say Grandma has died — and let’s go to the beach.”
I’m sure you folks would do the same — if you had beaches.
Ones with sand, not stones. Surf, not ripples from passing ships.
We are watching your warm discomfort with a bit of a laugh, and, I must admit, a spot of jealousy.
It’s so bloody cold down here the brass monkeys are saying it would freeze the boards off a bark humpy (that’s a wooden shelter to you).
A mate of mine in London reports it’s so hot his kids don’t have to go to school for the next couple of days if they don’t want to, and if they do, they can leave at lunchtime.
“Kids in Queensland and the Northern Territory would never be educated if you guys did that,” he said.
He’s right, of course. They’re not educated.
Like the kid in a Darwin heatwave who wanted to find out if the hot sun was enough to light the wick of a firecracker.
COOLING SWIM WITH SHARKS
For an unfathomable reason, which may have been directly related to the hours he spent in warm classrooms not getting an education, he stuck the banger between his buttocks and turned away from the sun.
It sure must have been hot enough. The banger exploded and the kid high-tailed his scorched nether regions to hospital.
This apocryphal tale prompted the NT News headline: Why I Stuck A Cracker Up My Clacker.
Darwin is our go-to city for heat.
It has been suggested by scientists that there is good reason for the term “going troppo”.
A study of Darwin residents showed that as it gets hotter there is a marked rise in levels of anxiety, stress, aggression, hostility and insomnia.
The more irritable they get, the more stupid things they do.
Like taking a cooling-off swim with sharks and crocodiles and occasionally getting eaten. Nobody who stayed at school after 1.30pm would do that.
But seriously, education and heat do go hand in hand. That’s why today you never see a little kid on the beach in a bathing — or birthday — suit.
No, they all wear protective clothing top to toe, to keep their tender skins filtered from the sun.
We didn’t do that in my day. Yeah, nah, of course not. We were Aussies. Big and bronzed.
My wife used to cover herself in coconut oil in search of a deeper tan.
When we were declared the melanoma capital of the world, the penny dropped and local governments funded huge campaigns urging people not to kill themselves.
One campaign was called Me No Fry; another, Slip Slop Slap.
This had nothing to do with what your toffs and politicians get up to — it’s a three-word slogan for “Slip on a shirt, Slop on sunscreen and Slap on a hat” — a routine followed by millions of our kids.
It’s good advice. Otherwise, you’ll be like me and my missus — splattered with sprays from nitrogen guns freezing off sunspots and occasionally having scoops of flesh sent off for analysis.
It’s not fun — it is a painful legacy of our old gone-troppo ignorance.
So, dear cousins and others in the Old Dart, welcome to our world.
Remember to slip, slop and slap, stay well-hydrated, keep out of the direct sun and remember, it won’t last long.
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Blessed relief will come. Soon you’ll be complaining about how cold it is.
Yours,
Mark
- Mark Day lives in Sydney and is the former editor of The Australian.