By Crikey, it is a warm day here in Broken Hill today. We have the evaporative cooler ducting it’s breeze through the house but it’s still pretty warm. Outside the ground is too hot to walk on and the corrugated iron that encases everything in this town sizzles on contact. The heat shimmer makes you wonder if light rays have ever travelled in a straight line. We are lucky to have a pool which H and the dog have decided to live in.

As the afternoon has worn on the wind has come up. The sky in the west is turning a dusky yellow. There will be a dust storm soon. I definitely prefer this dry desert heat to the sweaty humidity over on the east coast. I do still struggle to engage my brain and body when it is hot. It saps my will power.

I remember reading J.G Ballard’s, ‘Drowned World‘ when I was in Chiang Mai with my son back in 2009. Ballard’s descriptions of living in the intense tropical heat is amazing.

By then, at five o’clock, Kerans was almost completely exhausted. The noon temperature of a hundred and fifty degrees had drained the life out of him, and he lay limply under the moistened sail, letting the hot water drip down onto his chest and face, praying for the cooler air of the evening. The surface of the water turned to fire, so that the craft seemed to be suspended on a cloud of drifting flame. Pursued by strange visions, he paddled feebly with one hand.

I live here in direct opposition to the Drowned World but, like Kerans, I have my air conditioner, for now…

It has to be switched off in dust storms.