There has been much hooplah in the news lately about Australia's lack of leadership with a commitment to the environment as the climate summit at Copenhagen approaches. Brown coal, the exclusion of farming from carbon trading and water catchments that remain painfully dry in a weekend of rare Melbourne downpours have me spreading my arms and welcoming my friends to the apocalyptic weather becoming our reality. Seriously people if you want proof that global warping (no that was not a typo) is happening then come to Australia where spring heat waves are already plunging three states into hellfire.
It's only November, keep that firmly in your mind as you read on. Last February fires devastated the state and Victorians are collectively holding their breath as reports of flames spreading through the Blue Mountains in NSW send shivers down the spines of the population. There's still three longs months stretching between where we currently stand, having just seen two weeks in the mid-30s, and a time looked forward to as, 'over the worst'.
Let me tell you what it is like for a newcomer to experience the start of Melbourne's summer. My first thirty degree day I thought I had stepped into an oven and felt immediate sympathy for roasting chickens. Breathing was a struggle but I was reassured that come fifteen degrees hotter, I would actually continue to breathe it would just seem like my lungs were burning. This, was nothing – yet.
By the next 30+ day about a week later I had already acclimatised to expect air like dragon's breath and surprisingly this time it was not so bad. Dry heat is more bearable than the debilitating humidity I am used to in Auckland. Nothing decays into rot the way it does when you add moisture. It just fossilises into crumbling dust powder. Strange but true however this scary weather continues to astound me almost every day. As the heat wave continues day after day night time can't cool enough to allow the temperature to drop and so the next day starts off hotter than the last already. Twenty degrees at 7.00am rises a further two degrees within the hour. If you do the math the prediction for the day seems frightening.
Imagine if you will midday mercury climbing to thirty-eight, a searing dry heat, eerily still and silent. The next minute a wind sweeps through whipping dust and parchment leaves from the gutters to circle the air. I look up at the noise of what incredibly, sounds like rain and find that it is...followed closely by thunder. The heavens open and bellow dirty rain onto the gasping ground and the temperature instantly drops at least ten degrees. Just astounding! The following morning I blinked several times only to discover that the cataract-like haze before my eyes was in fact a humid cloud clinging to the tops of roofs and tall buildings of the city. By the afternoon it was raining and children splashed joyfully in puddles as their parents watched without censure. It was so rare that passers-by paused to smile. For the first time in months I fell asleep to the sound of rain rather than an oscillating fan by the bed. During the night I heard its familiar lull and in the morning the sky was darker than usual because it..was..still..raining. The radio DJ's children have never seen what she terms “old-fashioned rain”, rain that reminded her for childhood downpours lasting days. They are too young to know what I take for granted. Tomorrow's generation is already forgetting or worse, oblivious to the joy of water.
It's drier than I ever imagined here and this is the city, it's not the Outback cliché of the movies. Driving between Melbourne and Wagga Wagga the other weekend I witnessed more shame. Lake Eildon, famed site of Bonnie Doon in the iconic film “The Castle”, is so dry that not even a trickle flows under the bridge that used to span one of the major water supplies to the Goulburn Valley. In the movie they fish and blat about on speed boats on Lake Eildon. Today you can drive your car off the long concrete boat ramp straight into the hollow should be under water. A rabbit dashes in front of the car. The city rain has just stopped after two days of consistent falling and the 6 o'clock news describes it as torrential. Okay so it was steady but nowhere near that exaggeration. Have Victorians really forgotten what torrential looks like? Still we bless the rains down in Victoria until the weather reporter shakes his head answering the question on everyone's lips at the slightest spattering. Despite flooding in parts of the city, a city so unused to water that it has forgotten how to cope with more than a millimetre, it failed to raise the total catchment capacity above its current 38%. The best the weatherman could offer was that the addition has postponed the lake levels dropping further for a couple of days. Clearly they are in the wrong place to benefit from the preciously sparse rainfall and yet the solution offered by authorities is not to build more or shift the catchments but to de-salinate the bay! And what is the response? Blame it on the weatherman.
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