Open Writing

In our household we’ve started referring to those ladies who appear on television near the end of the news as “whether girls.” It’s not because we Aussies can’t spell. Some of us still can. (Why is it that our British cousins like to take the mickey out of us, implying that we, as a nation, are not so bright? We are not slow. It is just bloody hot down here you know.) No, we call them “whether girls” because we have been through a veritable spate of them lately and they all seem to succumb to the same fate - pregnancy.

Our first clue is when they turn sideways to point at the weather chart and their gently swelling bellies start to block out our view of Melbourne. We begin to wonder, “whether or not she is?” Within a few months our suspicions are confirmed as an enlarging bosom begins to obliterate Sydney.

These “whether girls” have predicted an El Nino effect this year which produces drought conditions and a summer from hell. It is only the second week of spring and already nature is gasping. You know it is bad when even the pavement weeds have died and the birds are melting in the shade with their beaks open, panting like dogs. The skywriting planes around here don’t scribble, “Marry me Jane.” They are on a far more serious mission and write, “Pray for rain.”

On Sunday it was so hot that I felt like I was standing in front of a fan forced oven with the door open and nowhere to hide. Suddenly we heard an ominous crackling and realized that a bushfire had started in the valley behind our house. The air filled with acrid smoke which poured down our nostrils and stung the back of our throats as if they had been lacerated by a witch’s fingernails. Ash and blackened gum leaves began to fall out of the sky and a synchronisation of fire trucks raced down the street, their sirens eerily setting off a cacophony of howling, neighbourhood dogs. As the flames surged into the air people ran out with their hosepipes to water down their gutters and protect their homes but because everyone did it at once, the water pressure was reduced to almost nothing, proving their efforts futile. The fire tankers raced around filling up from homes marked with SWS on their postboxes. SWS stands for ‘Static Water Supply’ and shows the firemen at a glance which homes have a backyard swimming pool.

Just as panic had reached its zenith those angels of salvation, the water bombing sky cranes hovered into view. With the whip cracking, thwack thwacking of their rotor blades and their dust blasting, downward drafts, they are an awesome display of power. For the next few hours they skillfully flew back and forth to the nearby golf course’s lake, scooped up water in their enormous, dangling snorkel tubes and then, resembling aroused donkeys, they triumphantly dumped the fire extinguishing liquid and, I suspect, a few surprised tadpoles onto the flames.

I find it most difficult to remain upbeat and of a cheery disposition when everything around me is frizzled, fried and on fire. I have heard of SAD or Season Affective Disorder which usually refers to becoming severely depressed during the cold, wet days of winter. It is most often associated with those northern hemisphere countries which have a tendency towards weather rather than climate. You’ve only to ride the London Underground in late February to see this phenomenon for yourself, everybody dressed in funereal grey or black, grimly commuting with their somber moods to match. I’m convinced that this condition occurs in summer here, sort of in reverse, when the extreme conditions have everyone shrivelled to a crisp, without hope and desperate for a drop of rain.

Which brings me to a thought I had. Why can’t some great Australian brain hurriedly invent a reciprocal spout between Australia and Britain? That way the Brits could pour their excess rain Down Under and we could beam some of our heat up and release the steam from this pressure cooker out. Things would even out a bit and everyone would be more comfortable. Of course, we could wait for some British engineer to come up with the required invention but that would take much longer and we don’t have time to muck about.