Smothering, bullying, stabbing: how it feels to be in one of the hottest places on Earth

2026-01-28 - 07:10

Everything felt like it was swelling, and despite my diligent consumption of water and Hydralyte, I couldn’t quite escape the persistent, low-level nausea. Even thinking took longer My mother grew up in Warracknabeal, a speck of a town four hours from Melbourne, Australia, in the wide, wheat country of the Wimmera – that part of Victoria where the sky starts to stretch, where you can see weather happening 100 kilometres away. Once or twice a year, our family would pack into the rattling old LandCruiser and drive up to visit my grandmother. It can’t always have been blistering weather but my memories of those trips are shot through with summer heat: the peeling paint of my grandmother’s house, the blasted-dry grass of the reserve over the road and its ancient metal monkey bars, so hot they burned your hands. Once, a dust storm blew up while we were there, engulfing the small weatherboard house in howling dirty orange. Continue reading...