44.3

The hot season

February 15, 2018

We've now on our fifth (and hopefully last) day in a row over 40C, with the highest being Tuesday at 44.3C (that's the official temperature at Emerald which is 60km away, but our little cheapie thermometer outside was showing 45 so I'm not disagreeing). Only a couple of weeks ago (Feb 4) we had a near record cold day of 23C! I admit that, while I still wore shorts that day, I also had a lightweight sloppy joe on. That cold spell also brought our only significant rain (60mm) this year, which was very welcome. Unlike this run of very hot days (expected, yes, welcome, no).

I'm blaming all these temperature extremes for the head cold that I've been fighting for over a week now:(

Also a couple of weeks back, on Jan 30, there was an all-day power outage after a morning thunderstorm took out 2 poles in our area. That was "only" a 35C day: the heat came in the afternoon at which point we started sitting outside on the patio in the hopes of some breeze. We had just enough gas to fire up the bbq to boil water (no way could Anthony go 8 hours without coffee!) which prompted us to get a fresh tank. The local store had a generator so we also got ice and dumped bags in the fridge and freezer to help them stay cold. We're now discussing getting a generator - power here hasn't been the most reliable. Ultimately we want to get a solar battery system but we're waiting for the batteries to improve a bit more.

The hot days have also tested the passive cooling of the house and we've decided to get the sun off a couple more of the western facing walls by putting up some trellis and growing things on it. The photo below is Anthony, very early one morning, putting in the poles for the trellis that will shade our bathroom.

Anyway, with all this heat we've put half a dozen bowls and containers out on the patio with water for the local birds. There's a family of magpies that appreciate it, as well as few occasional lorikeets, mynahs, friarbirds etc. The happiest though are the (drab looking) apostle birds, which we've fallen in love with. They come in flocks of about 12 (hence their name) and they're incredibly social. They sit as physically close to (or on!) one another as possible, quarrel and fuss and groom and play with each other, and whatever one is into, they're all into. They adore the spa facilities we've provided and will spend hours there (one quirk is that they really like to drop a flower into the bowl they're bathing in to play with - it's hilarious to see!) with us watching. When we put seed out it's not uncommon to get a bop on the head from a wing in appreciation. They won't quite sit on us, but they're happy to come right up to us. One great thing about having them around is that they'll make a very specific type of racket if they see a snake, which has come in handy!