It’s been boring down on the city as a suffocatingly slow-moving heatwave makes its way across the state, adding another degree of difficulty to Bathurst gardeners’ lives as they contend with the recently introduced water restrictions.

Overnight Friday was particularly challenging as the city sweltered through a 22 degree minimum – just one degree off the hottest minimum on record for Bathurst and hotter than the average maximum for seven months of the year.

Some relief arrived overnight on Saturday when easterly winds brought the temperature under 20 degrees, but the forecast shows the hot weather hanging around for a while yet – and there’s still February to come.

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Back to normal: Citizenship ceremony to be held on Australia Day

Date debate: At odds over when citizenship ceremony will be held

The heat was also on our mayor this past week as he dealt with an insurrection over the timing of the city’s Australia Day citizenship ceremony.

The ceremony was to have been held this Friday, the day before Australia Day, but deputy mayor Bobby Bourke came out all guns blazing when the change became apparent to him.

“I’m disappointed in the mayor, very disappointed,” Cr Bourke told the Western Advocate mid-last week, laying the responsibility for the change squarely at Cr Hanger’s feet.

Cr Ian North was more blunt, saying he was “bitterly disappointed” in Cr Hanger.

The mayor, for his part, said the Australia Day Committee had “made the decision in September and it was endorsed by councillors in October”, only adding to the confusion about who had decided what.

There were no objections to the Australia Day event timetable back at the October council meeting, Cr Hanger told the Advocate. 

A day later, and after a bit of argy-bargy, the citizenship ceremony found its way back to Saturday, Australia Day, but the whole episode was illustrative of some of the tensions among our current crop of councillors.

Though the matter appears to be resolved, it’s hard not to imagine some bad feelings will linger over the controversy – if for no other reason than the very messy, last-minute way in which it played out.

It might be a bit cool among some of our councillors for a little while as the events of last week are digested – it's just a pity some of that coolness couldn’t be added to our weather forecast.