...throw another snag on the footpath

For any international readers, or perhaps Queenslanders and Tasmanians, I just feel the need to mention that right at the moment On the topic of weather, southern Australia has gone a fair bit barmy of late.

It's 3:19pm, Saturday the seventh day of February 2009AD. According to the Bureau of Meteorology's excellent website, a product of the era's rapid advances in technology, the shade temperature at the airport down the road is currently 46.2 degrees Celcius (115.2 degrees Fahrenheit). Wind gusts above 60km/h are buffeting the world outside. I am dwelling in a dark converted brick garage, well shaded, and maintaining a temperature of around 28.9 degrees C. I consider myself very lucky.

The room is silent but the house around it creaks and thumps. I feel like I'm in a bomb shelter. Outside the sky is a pallid grey but the sun stills beats through at full attack, and the hot, northwesterly wind brings no relief. In fact the wind brings it's own type of burning sensation on the skin and lungs. The sky is greyest on the horizon, a warm grey, the grey of smoke, the grey of firestorms charging through the bushland around the city.

Last Tuesday it was 38 then 42 then 44 then 45 then 35. And we're lucky. Our longest run over 40 was three days. Adelaide copped nine or ten days in a row. My bougainvillea looks like a piece of dried seaweed. My cactus is burnt and my pussy cat looks buggered.

And our Premier, John Brumby, has a press conference yesterday to basically say tomorrow is gonna be a dog's breakfast and basically nobody should do anything. Don't even bother leaving the house! The Age online ran the rather curious headline "WORST DAY EVER". Talk about the cup being half empty. I suspect if I were involved in the Battle of the Somme I may be indifferent to that claim.

So why didn't Mr Premier urger such precautions onto the unsuspecting public last week, when we copped 5 days of bullshit temperatures in a row? Could it have anything to do with last weeks heatwave occuring on working days? The PT system was 50% stuffed and people were feeling a tad bothered out there last week, rushing to work in a blast furnace, sleep deprived only to feel like grumpshite and not have a functioning brain.

Where was the 'don't bother leaving the house' then Brumby. That what you'd call "A Convenient Heatwave", one that happens on the weekend, ya gobshite!