Friday June 20, 2008 at 8:59
“When it gets really hot in the cities and towns dotted around Australia’s perimeter, people subtly change. Strangers who’d ordinarily pass without acknowledgement, return wary glances, a heightened watchfulness as they survey the shimmering horizon. For radiating from the sun is an invisible threat. […] In small central desert communities they still sing the fire totem songs, trying to keep the environmental balance right, but our European post-settlement past is dotted with heat trauma and anxiety. It’s as if high temperatures erase rational thinking, and our memories prove short as time and again we endure and barely survive the ravaging effects of what the sun’s heat brings us.”
— Gretchen Miller / RN - the long hot summer]
