TWO SUMMERS

Evening Star, Issue 23175, 26 January 1939, Page 15

TWO SUMMERS

NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA [Written by D.V.N. for the ‘ Evening Star.’] So Dunedin is complaining about its summer? If I’d brought our Australian January oyer with mg, instead of leaving it behind me, you’d have had cause to grumble. We live only 60 miles from Sydney, and have escaped lightly, but even so the heat had been terrible. The roar and crackle of the fires, the choking haze of smoke, and the constant dread of being the next to lose our property has left us all exhausted. Though our average temperature, for a fortnight past, had been lOldeg, we wondered what to expect when, on January 11, we found the thermometer registering 75 before 6 a.m. During the day the temperature climbed steadily until it reached 108. We had tied young saplings round the verandah and drenched them with buckets of 'water, but before the day was halfdone they were shrivelled to a crisp,; and the window glass, though shaded from the sun, was hot to the touch. We could only shut ourselves in the house and lie on the floor, hoping desperately for a southerly. That day the fire swept through a neighbour’s orchard, and destroyed his crop of ripening apples. A year’s profits gone in five minutes, _ and I doubt if his trees will bear again. Saturday was even worse. When the temperature reached 112 we stirred from our inertia to do something about it. We dipped the curtains in buckets of water and hung them up at the windows dripping. We did the same thing with sheets and blankets and hung them over the doors. Rather a waste of time, for they were dry in 10 mintues. It really was hot, so hot that the year’s most importafUt cricket match (or so we think in our town) had to be abandoned, and my young brother, who had gone in to play, was unable to get home as the fires were across the road. They were all round us that night, and though our house stands on cleared ground it was an anxious, time. Then the southerly came, and oh, the blessed relief of it. We ran out into the garden and fairly danced with joy, and on Sunday, if you will credit it, we were huddled over a fire in the lounge room, for the temperature had fallen to 58 and a light, cold rain was falling. It finally put out the fires, though, round our way, they were already dying for the lack of fuel. The bush for miles around is black, and though we have saved our house the paint is blistered from the tin roof, and not a green thing shows in the garden. I have been walking round Dunedin, gloating over its unbelievably green grass, its miles of hedges, and the leafy trees. If this is summer, I like it, and while it lasts I’m not going back to sunny New South Wales.