As most of you who have had some vague interaction with me before will know, I live in Australia.
And Australia is known for all sorts of things that try to kill you. Spiders, sharks, deserts, jellyfish, murderous psychopaths in the outback...but the thing that really gets me, year in, year out, every single time, is the heat.
Oh god. The heat. It's the middle of March, so it SHOULD, be cooling down now as we move into Autumn. But it hasn't been cooling down at all.

From about the first weekend of March, there were 9 straight days of weather over 35 degrees here. The first day I was alright. I had my fan on, drank lots of water, tried to keep indoors or where there was air conditioning. I did this for the first three days successfully. Then the heat started getting to me, and the lack of sleep, compounded with that constant, hot, sweaty, uncomfortable feeling prompted me to go a bit auto-pilot-y, and do a few stupid things.

The first being that after putting a load of clothes into the machine, I took my laundry powder home and put it in my refrigerator. I don't know why I did it, or what my logic was, but I didn't even notice until I went looking for my bottle of water and found it sitting next to the Dynamo!

The second was trying to cook dinner. I had everything ready to go, went to boil the eggs in the saucepan on the stove, and realised I'd forgotten to put the water in the pot on to boil after 15 minutes of the water steadfastly refusing to bubble.

I don't like the heat.
(Poppet some assembly required., Sun 24 Mar 2013, 1:31, 14 replies)

Looks like our choices these last few summers have been -
record hot temps for a record time period, bush-fires, floods, the obligatory cyclone and then predictably more floods.

If I was of the religious nutter persuasion I'd be feeling a bit twitchy by now. As it is, if there is a God - I really wish he/she'd stop fucking with the thermostat.

EDIT: Brain Fart moment - I've looked at the spelling of "flood" and had to ponder whether it's correct. How can a word you pronounce as 'flud' be spelled as 'flued'?
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sun 24 Mar 2013, 1:43, closed)

It was the humidity that got me in Sydney.
Every single fucking day in the summer, one of my colleagues would ask "did you swim here today?"

What really got me was that they'd spend all winter whining about how cold it was and preying for the summer and when it got there, they spent all day whining about how hot it was as if thy'd never lived through an Australian summer. Even though it got ridiculously hot in Adelaide, al least it was never humid.
I really miss it now I'm back in the cold, dark, frozen north.
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sun 24 Mar 2013, 8:50, closed)

When I was growing up in Mt. Isa
we called the humid months (October to December) "The Wet". They also had another point of reference for people dealing with this weather effect - "going troppo".

Welcome to the club both of you - once you've gone troppo, you can't go back. This is Australia.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sun 24 Mar 2013, 9:08, closed)

I've heard Darwin is the worst for going troppo.
Apparently, you get that just-before-a-thunderstorm feeling for weeks before the wet finally breaks and it drives people mental. I was up at Mt Lewis near the end of the wet in early 2012 and it was actually quite cold for a short while. Spent a happy few hours flicking leeches at each other.
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sun 24 Mar 2013, 10:05, closed)

Brisbane Summer is fucked. Off the charts heat & humidity. Air conditioning makes it bearable.

Autumn, Winter and Spring are pretty good. Winter only lasts a few weeks.

I grew up in Tasmania, and I scoff at my pathetic neighbours in Brisbane, who have a woodheater, and rather than say, put on a jumper, they make a big song and dance about lighting a fire during winter when the temperature plummets to single digits overnight. I also like watching them try to chop firewood with an axe. No clue whatsoever.

I live in an old Queenslander house, which does not contain a single fireplace (at some point, the old timers finally worked out it was a waste of time and effort to build them). It was kind of weird at first, coming from a cool climate, to not have a woodstack by the back door and at least one fireplace in the house.

My ideal Australian cycle would be to retreat to Tasmania each Summer, then head back to Brisbane for the remainder of the year.

Actually, on second thoughts, my ideal Australian cycle would also involve travelling around the country, looking for good camping spots, away from the ubiquitous trio of German backpackers.
( Ken Oath, Sun 24 Mar 2013, 11:21, closed)

I'd have loved to have visited Tassie.
Sadly, Adelaide was too backwards to offer a direct flight to Hobart and we did three days' birding in south-west WA instead.
Worth it for the photos:

www.tonykeenebirds.co.uk/abirds/scarletrobin.htm
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sun 24 Mar 2013, 11:32, closed)

I went to an Oil and Gas conference the other week, and was chatting to a bloke who maps all the fauna in the Gas fields that needs to be avoided (I do a lot of mapping for that purposes, it's a surprisingly big issue with the Gas companies)).

We were talking about the near-extinct Orange Bellied Parrot of Tasmania. Apparently it migrates to South Australia each year to nest and breed. That's a hell of a flight for a tiny Parrot. The habitat is slowly being removed in South Australia (natural salt marshlands), hence they have virtually stopped breeding.

Quite sad. Feral cats probably account for the few that actually make the journey, breed and return to Tasmania.
( Ken Oath, Sun 24 Mar 2013, 11:57, closed)

Try the humidity in Hong Kong. I lived there for two years. Even a 2 minute walk outside would leave me with armpits like a Spanish waiter.

( Fucking hell Jeff I am not a robot, Sun 24 Mar 2013, 17:48, closed)

Fun fact: being in Shenzhen in July almost killed me.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Sun 24 Mar 2013, 18:16, closed)

That will teach you to not hang out with Triads again.

( Fucking hell Jeff I am not a robot, Sun 24 Mar 2013, 18:24, closed)

You've clearly got severe heatstroke, and I'm afraid you're probably going to die.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Sun 24 Mar 2013, 17:29, closed)

You lot
can all just fuck off.
(username failed moderation, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 11:00, closed)

Suck my dick.
( Ken Oath, Mon 25 Mar 2013, 13:05, closed)

This is not an
appropriate place for cruising.

Try reddit.
(username failed moderation, Tue 26 Mar 2013, 12:20, closed)