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Waiting for the Cool Change

Text: Waiting for the Cool Change

from d., 07.12.09

WAITING FOR THE COOL CHANGE...
(dedicated to Melbourne weather).
...

My mother hated the heat.  When I was very small, I was of the opinion that she hated the heat more than anyone else in the world, and that she was the only person in the world who hated the heat to that extreme extent. 

I think she really believed both those statements.

Our awareness of how much she hated the heat would begin when she heard of the summer temperatures rising in Perth.  We lived on the northern edge of the Melbourne sprawl, but she knew that if Perth had a heat wave, Melbourne would get a heat wave three days later.

What a looming disaster.  What a crisis.  What if it hit the ton, like it did in Perth?  What if it stayed that way for several days?  How would Mother cope?

I quite liked the ‘normal’ summer weather pattern in Melbourne.  A high pressure cell over the south of the continent would see Melbourne have a week of bright, clear weather with gradually increasing temperatures from the low-80s to the mid-90s, with quite a pleasant breeze and cool nights – at least coolish - where we lived, away from the concrete jungle.

If the weather pattern then did its normal thing, the high pressure cell would move across from west to east followed by a ‘low’, which, as it progressed, would cause the wind to change from a pleasantly cool south or south-easterly to a very hot north or north-westerly.  That is what makes the days hot in Melbourne.  That is what fans the fires, if it is a ‘bad fire year’ like it was in 1939, 1962, 1983 and, of course, 2009.  

Let us assume I am remembering the protocols in our household on a hot, north-windy day that is not one of those fiery years.  In our light and airy timber house, with sliding glass doors and verandahs on all sides except the south, I cannot smell any smoke.  On this hot summer day, the heat wave has already arrived from Perth – it too exactly three days.

It is about eleven in the morning.  Although the early morning was fresh and spring-like and the house was a pleasant temperature, by this time of morning the north wind is bringing all heat it can muster from the hot inland desert right into our lounge room.  Mother is sitting near the open sliding door on the northern side of the house.  She has a cup of tea on the coffee table beside her, her swollen feet resting on a pouf in front of her, a pen in her hand and the ubiquitous folded crossword page from the Age resting on a book in her lap.  She is listening intensely to one of the local radio stations and she becomes momentarily animated as she shouts “It has hit Geelong!”.  She means the cool change; the southerly that accompanies the cold front that precedes the movement of the low pressure cell across the southern extremities of the continent (coming directly across the Bight and missing Adelaide, as usual).

It is still hot at midday, and she stalks around sniffing the air from the other sliding doors, like a camel sniffing for water, as she makes a desultory salad for lunch and closes the awnings on the western side of the house.  Although she understands about the sun being hot, she seemingly does not realise that an open window or door will let equally hot air in on the shady sides of the house.  Somehow, she retains a very English idea that any breeze is cooler than no breeze. I had proved to myself that she was wrong. When she was out for the day on one of these north-windy days, I left the sliding doors all closed, and managed to keep the house a lot cooler than usual until mid afternoon.  But she didn’t believe me, and still insisted it was better to sit by the open door.

So, on this day, she sits there for a couple more hours, looking morose and uncomfortable, and gives us the detailed geographical location of the cool change as she hears each successive bulletin on the radio.  In her mind’s eye, she can see the places this zephyr is passing.  She has known all the roads and landmarks within a day’s drive of Melbourne since, at the age of nineteen, she first bought a car during wartime when the soldier friends of her brothers would come ‘home’ on R&R and bring with them their petrol rations.

This plotting of the progress of the cooling breeze seems to provide some sort of dramatic comfort, a catharsis.  At least it gives her something to occupy her mind at a time when she is physically and mentally too hot to do any other ‘work’.

Then, suddenly it is here.  All the pictures on the wall rattle as we rush out onto the verandah to inhale the lifesaving breathable air. We rejoice with her.  The autumnal blast wakes Mother as if from a dream, and she instantly becomes a new person  – or at least there is a renewal of the ‘energetic Mum’ that we know and love.  She vehemently expresses the hope that ‘this is the last heat wave of the season!’

There is a legend about Melbourne weather, that it can exhibit four seasons in one day.  This is the type of day when that occurs. Sometimes there would now be rain, but even if there wasn’t, by bed-time our lightweight house would have cooled to the same temperature as the wintry weather that had just arrived from the icy Southern Ocean, causing us to scramble for the doonas that had slipped down beside the wall, or got lost among the stored items under the bed.  By next morning, if we needed to go to school or work, we would definitely need warm socks and a jumper.

Even though I have not lived in that city for many years, I know that the weather pattern has not changed substantially in its general nature.  For those of you still ‘doing your time’ down there, I hope that all your cool changes arrive when expected, and that there are no dangerous bush fires in 2010.

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