Melbourne's warm weather, Victoria's bushfires and the cool change

It's sometimes a surprise to people new to the city to learn that Melbourne is the hottest city in Australia...

...by one measurement anyway.  Sydneysiders and Brisbanites like to mock their southern cousins for living in a "chilly" city.  Melburnians certainly experience cooler winters, as befits people living as close to Antarctica as it's possible to get on the Australian mainland.  Anyone from Northern Europe or much of the USA or Canada may question the accuracy of the description, though.

But when it comes to the ability consistently to deliver the hottest day of the year, Melbourne trounces every other city in the country.  

Melbourne, 2009

The height of summer is in January and February.  If you look at the average temperature figures  for these months, you will see a pleasant range, between a low of about 14̊ centigrade and a high of around 26̊.  But for some days in every summer, winds will gather in the far north or northwest.  After sweeping their way across four thousand kilometres of roasting desert, picking up temperature on the way, they throw themselves onto Melbourne with all the force of a continent's heat, before rushing on to cool themselves over the Southern Ocean.

On days like this, Melbourne's temperatures will shoot up to 40̊ centigrade or more, and if you're very unlucky they won't drop below the mid 20s even at night.

Several of Australia's cities get up into the 40s at some point during summer, but Melbourne generally has the knack of topping them.  Perhaps the most extreme example came in 2009 when, between the 28th and 30th January, the city experienced three successive days in excess of 43̊ C, followed about a week later by its all time record of 46.4̊.

Melbourne's heatwave crown rests uneasily on her head.  Quite apart from the personal discomfort of her residents, the city sits in the state of Victoria, which is one of the most fire-prone places on earth.  Whether started by happenstance or (regrettably) arson, when a blaze gets going it can be virtually impossible to extinguish, particularly whilst it's being fanned by a strong, hot wind.  The 2009 temperatures helped cause the devastation of the Black Saturday bushfires in which, tragically, 173 people died and 414 were injured.  Property was devastated and many survivors were rendered homeless.  

During a major fire there's a good chance that the smoke from its incinerated hinterland will blow over the city, filling the air with a slight mist and invading your nose and throat, and making it impossible to forget what's unfolding perhaps just a hundred kilometres away.  Victoria's propensity to fire is truly astounding:  the coloured areas on this map show only the major areas that have been burnt out over just the last ten years.

When they're in the middle of one of these enervating heatwaves, one thought keeps Melburnians going:  the cool change.  This is what they call the weather fronts that bring relief from the oven-like temperatures.

If her summer temperatures are noteworthy, Melbourne's cool changes are quite impressive too.  Suddenly, the wind will swing from the north to the west or south, and the change is instantaneous.  The mercury may drop by fifteen degrees in as little as ten minutes, and people go from planning trips to the beach to putting on an extra layer of clothes.  I have yet to complain about this inconvenience.

McMansion

Honey, the house ate the garden

When they think of Australia, people often imagine everyone enjoying the warm weather outside, and healthy kids learning sport or just playing in the back yard.  Many Australian families do live like that .  But an increasing number of them are opting to build or buy houses so large that they virtually eliminate any usable garden space.  They have supersized, and their home has become a McMansion.

They're pretty easy to spot.  They're so damn huge, for one thing.  Many of them have a large side order of ugly to go with that.  Often they're built in the outer suburbs, where land values are much less than in more established areas.  This seems to have encouraged families to spend  what they've saved by moving out there on covering virtually every square metre of the plot with house.  


Unfortunately, their popularity has encouraged increasing numbers of homeowners and developers to tear down smaller houses on good-sized plots in more established suburbs and build all over them as well.  What all of these places have in common, apart from their size, is a pocket-sized back garden, sometimes not more than three metres across, and often impractically L-shaped along two sides of the house as well.

It probably looks worse from the other sides

The extra space inside is given over to extra bedrooms, home theatres, "entertainment zones" or simply outsize hallways, kitchens and living areas.  Over the past half century the number of Australians per household has dropped by 30% but the size of houses has doubled.

The environmental impact of all this is profound.  Australia is already one of the highest per capita consumers of energy in the world, and these monstrosities are air conditioned throughout the summer and heated in the winter.  The outer suburbs where they conglomerate are already poorly served by public transport, and such low-density housing makes what there is even less practical, leading to increased reliance on the motor car.  Moreover, the sheer quantity of land concreted over to build them increases water run-off and therefore the risk of flooding.

Some have argued that one of the driving factors in the growth of the McMansion has been the desire for ostentation, often by those who can't really afford it.  Certain aspects of the phenomenon seem to bear this out.  Although there is often little in the way of usable outdoor space (for the kids to play in, for example), some land is generally found for a formal front garden whose only apparent purpose is to give the house "kerb appeal".  Often the only part of the exterior that looks as if any thought has been put into its appearance is the front, with the sides in particular often resembling those of a shop or industrial unit.

It has been claimed that the market for McMansions is declining.  The turbo-charged Australian housing market has lost some of its edge, and some of their disadvantages may only become fully apparent after purchase.  These include the eye-watering running costs, and the need to travel everywhere by car in an era of rising fuel costs.  We'll see.  In the meantime, McMansions are still being built, and they are likely to remain a feature of the Australian environment for many years to come.

For a readable summary of some of the problems posed by the McMansion phenomenon, this article by Professor Terry Burke may be of interest.

In praise of the public barbecue...

Fortunately, there's a barbecue just to the left
(photo www.weekendnotes.com)

It's well known that many Australians are constantly on the lookout for the next excuse to burn meat outdoors.  And why wouldn't they be, given the quality of both the produce and the weather?

However, at some point, in the struggle to tame this rugged country, the pioneers were faced with a dilemma.  What do you do if you're off exploring and you feel hungry?  Either you need to have remembered to bring a load of heavy barbecue kit or, even worse, you might have to eat something that you didn't grill yourself.

Fortunately, the Aussies were willing to do whatever was necessary to solve the problem.  The answer was to place public barbecues in parks, beauty spots and beside beaches around the country.  

They are powered by electricity or gas (best not to encourage people to light fires in one of the most fire-prone places on earth) and, in Victoria at least, are generally free.  They consist of a simple hotplate, and whilst you probably won't be cooking anything fancy on them (there's only one heat setting) they're perfectly adequate for most things.

So, if you fancy staying on a bit later at the beach to see the sunset, you needn't worry about getting cold and hungry.  Pack a few sausages or burgers and some tongs and the family can all enjoy some hot food.

When you consider the time and cost of building and maintaining all of these excellent facilities so that anyone can use them for free, the level of Australian dedication to the cause of outdoor cookery becomes clear.  The only drawback - and in most people's view it's a minor one - is the issue of cleanliness.  There's no guarantee that the people who used your barbecue last will have left the hotplate in the condition you'd like, although in busy areas the local government tends to be pretty good about cleaning them regularly.  

Some people scrub the barbecue fastidiously first, with a cleaning kit that they carry around for the purpose.  Most just heat them up properly and then give the plate a bit of a scrape, excusing themselves to their friends with the consolation that it all adds to the flavour.  I've yet to hear of anyone who claims to have suffered illness as a result of an inadequately sterilised barbecue, though if anyone out there has done, please let me know and I'll consider modifying my behaviour.  But I'll probably just chance it.