When I admire how the rain overnight brought out the fresh bush scents, she disagrees. On Christmas Eve 2019 I wake to see brown water churning between the normally barren Todd River’s banks across the road from my townhouse.ĭuring the year I’ve struck up an acquaintance in the library with a Luritja woman from Papunya, chatting with her whenever she brings in her grandkids to use the computers. When fifty-five days exceeded 40☌ between July 2018 and June 2019 I began to wonder when the desert capital will become uninhabitable.īy the year’s end, the town is awash. A 2015 CSIRO report says Alice Springs averaged seventeen days above 40☌ each year during 1981–2010 and forecast the figure rising to thirty-one days by 2030. “Heat wave” - the term that’s used on the news - is surely a euphemism for what we’re experiencing. One morning when I was making breakfast the temperature was already 39☌.
In summers past, say long-term residents, the temperature usually fell to 15☌ at night, but high maximums these days are accompanied by high minimums. January is typically when Alice people flee to the coast to avoid the heat, but this year it’s even hotter and more humid than I remember it during the noughts.
I first moved here in 2003, and even after I shifted to Melbourne in 2010 I was never entirely absent, returning to Central Australia every few months to work on a research project. I’ve been back in Alice Springs since October 2018 to make repairs to my unit and live cheaply while I finish writing a book, Into the Loneliness, about two women who roamed outback Australia last century. Patrons line up well before opening time and then spend most of the day inside, charging phones, watching old westerns and listening to bush bands on computers, or sleeping in armchairs they’ve dragged beneath air-conditioning vents. Since Christmas Eve we’ve had twelve days of temperatures above 40☌, including two record-breaking maximums of 45.6. It’s January 2019, and the public library where I’m employed in Mparntwe Alice Springs heaves with people escaping the furnace outside.
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