IN weather, as in life, there’s always someone worse off than you.
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As Bathurstians have baked through days in the late 30s this week, our cousins further west have been burnt to a crisp.
The numbers tell the story: 43 and 44 degrees for Dubbo on Tuesday and Wednesday, 45 and 46 for Condobolin, a scarcely believable 47 and 47 for Hay.
They are temperatures to send a shiver down the spine of long-term locals of the Central Tablelands, used to long winters, glorious springs and autumns and summers that can disappear at a moment’s notice.
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But they are also numbers to reinforce a truth sometimes forgotten in an age of central heating, arctic air-conditioning and the occasional spontaneous trip overseas for more palatable climes: Australia is a tough place.
Away from the coast (where the extremes are better suppressed), Australia quickly becomes uncompromising and unsympathetic, cheerfully inhospitable and occasionally downright dangerous.
It’s not the land of serene sunbakers and cheerful cockies that we project to overseas tourists – and occasionally to ourselves.
It’s not the land of cheeky backyard cricket matches, placid rivers and canola fields so bright they hurt the eyes.
Those are elements of Australia, but they make up only a small part of the country, a sliver of the whole.
We can congregate in our towns and cities, surrounded by tamed gardens and orderly streets, but we can’t completely ignore the wildness that lays not far outside the urban boundaries.
This week’s heatwave hovering over the middle of the country like a zeppelin is a reminder of that wildness.
So were the savage storms that shouldered their way into our city from the west last week, bringing hail and sudden destructive dumps of rain.
Or the towering dust storms that occasionally envelop our cities, covering nice cars in nice streets and causing tut-tutting among the owners of those vehicles who are irritated by the inconvenience.
Grinding droughts are another reminder. As is a flood that can bring the centre of a modern metropolis like Brisbane to a standstill.
Forty-seven degrees in Hay on a January day is not just a temperature or a number, it’s a summary: it says something about the country and it says something about the people who choose to make it home.
