the tables turn

Many moons ago (a very big many), we had a summer which I will never forget.

It was the year we had Tegan and, with my usual haphazard thinking, I had planned another April birth, another season of being large and lumpy through the summer.

This was before the time of air conditioning. No-one had anything more than fans in their homes. A few odd (posh) places were cooled mechanically but most of us just copped it sweet.

We were living in the NSW wheat belt, that huge flat expanse west of the Great Divide. The summer days were scorching hot but, with nothing to hold the heat in, the nights were cool and refreshing.

Until that year.

That was the year the enormous, immovable high got stuck off the east coast in late February.

The days were blistering, well over 40 every day. And, to add to the joy of an enormously pregnant mum, the jetstream stuck on our side of the divide brought thin high-level cloud in every evening. The sun boiled the land and then nature kindly put a cirrus lid on it to keep it at a simmer.

It lasted for 32 days.

Thirty two days of the mercury soaring over 40 every day. Thirty two days when the overnight temperature didn't get below 30.

The local shops sold out of fans, paddle pools, ice, sun hats. People slept (or attempted to) on their verandahs, trampolines, roofs or just out on the back lawn. Gardens singed and died, crops withered, water tanks were perilously empty and dams cracked and crazed around their muddy pools.

The birds began to disappear (dead or gone I don't know). Roads melted and stuck to our shoes (or burnt our feet). Children stopped playing and lay in rare shade.

No-one slept. Tempers frayed. Teachers yelled at kids and kids yelled back. Bosses sacked workers and they didn't care. Accidents increased and no-one showed any sympathy. Violence became apparent. Pub brawls, domestic stouches, playground biffs, shouting matches. The local blueys were run off their feet (and gave out more than the odd spanking).

Babies were draped in damp sheets and old ladies dozed in cold bathes. The banks of the local river were crowded with people just sitting up to their necks in the shallows, a sea of unmoving Greg Chappell hats in the murky water.

By the 22nd day I had had enough (more than enough). Even my usually dour husband had raised his voice at me and the kids.

We went to the bank and took out a loan.

We bought a rare and exotic air-conditioner (we drove a 860km round trip to get it) and installed it in the lounge room window.

We spent the last 9 days of that heatwave wallowing in the cool of our new acquisition. We slept in that room and ate in that room and hosted an almost endless stream of visitors seeking to share our bounty.

We survived.

I've been remembering that summer a lot in the last week or so. I look at the synoptic charts on the weather reports and see the huge high stuck over the Indian ocean and remember.

The thermometer on our verandah tells me it isn't nearly so hot (high 30s) and it gets cooler at night (low 20s) but the cloud rolling in each evening and the teasing sight of lightning out to sea makes me recall. As our cooler thunders along on our roof and its' gentle zephyrs waft over me, I remember.

And whisper a pray of thanks at the altar of the god BreezeAir that it is now Tegan's time to be pregnant.

And I resist the urge to ner ner ner!