Virga

When Sky and Earth Don't Speak

I’m cold and I’m thinking about summer. The camping show is on tomorrow so I’m watching off-grid electrical systems on YouTube. I’m taking notes and learning all I can about amp hours and how to make the most use of the sun.

There are many climates in Australia. Adelaide’s summers are particularly brutal. The mid-north of South Australia is the outback and temperatures get to as high as 50 degrees.

Winters see thick frosts and sub-zero mornings. Extremes leave gardens filled with dust. Rocks are used to lessen evaporation and the successful plants are silver ones. Resinous blood runs thick in the local flora. If you get sick, they get you the Flying Doctor.

I attended a wedding on Valentine’s Day in one such place. The groomsmen wore matching thongs. It was held at the local pool, and as it was a country wedding, everyone went to the pub afterwards for drinks.

A spread was laid out by all the country women containing whatever carbohydrate-protein combination you wanted. All 45 combinations. All there with mandatory tomato sauce, for dipping. Food was put in the fridge as it was too hot to eat. It came out again after the sun went down.

Inside, it was a crowded 48 degrees. I downed seven ice cold beers and it didn’t even touch the sides. The truly miraculous effect of outback heat and the human form is that I don’t even drink alcohol. It was hot. It was a wedding. What the heck.

At mum’s house, washing is dry in ten minutes flat. The benefit is the sheets come in from the line smelling wonderful. Summer has its benefits. The metal laundry door burns me three times a week and is a consequence of bringing the washing in.

Here, the air is so dry, the rain evaporates before it hits the ground. This phenomenon is called virga. It’s like living on an ironing board. The air beneath the cloud is so dry and hot, that a grey curtain of rain will disappear half way down. Evaporated. Return to sender. Dry as a bone. Gone.

It’s immensely frustrating.

Inland, especially during hot conditions, the atmosphere can have such a large “evaporation demand” that a storm may look like it is delivering rain while the ground below receives nothing. It is one of those moments where the landscape teaches you that what you see in the sky is not always what arrives on the earth.

The build up is intense. There is thunder. There is sheet lightning as it’s so hot, even the sky can’t be bothered. Then there’s silence. A summer storm at mum’s house is twenty seconds long.

People underestimate the toll it takes on a body to live in arid spaces. I live on electrolytes over summer. Otherwise, it’s a three month headache and fatigue. I have a car fridge in my car at all times, and people scurry to the shops so that they’re home again by 9am.

Some of my happiest memories are of the desert. Many see a whole lot of nothing. I think the desert promotes humility. If I get down on my hands and knees, there is a world of microplants and the tiniest, white pebbles that look so delicate. It’s like one of those fancy Michelin star platters of deconstructed nature, on a red dust platter.

I've read books in dry creek beds on a hot summer day, where the air read over forty degrees. A gentle breeze drops the ambient temperature. The key is stillness. There’s a certain luxury to the level of lethargy I can incur through warm bones and time slowed down.

Desert time is real. No hurry. It gets done. Mind your manners. Why stand when you can sit. Why sit when you can lie down. Days are split between blocks. Sunrise to 11am. The hours of do not mention the heat. Come out again at maybe 4pm. Maybe at 8:30, dependent on whether it’s a heatwave, or not. There is no pushing through. The human yields to the landscape here.

Heat stroke is no fun. When I was a child, you got over it. Now there are all sorts of warnings about dying. We ran five blocks to our school oval on hot summer’s days. There was no bottled water. We drank bore water from the school taps. It’s disgusting, but if you push it through your cheeks with enough force, you can get enough water down your throat to make it back to the classroom.

The front of the car carried bladder bags filled with water, to try and keep it cool. Childhood visits to Quorn, at the base of the Ikara-Flinders Ranges, bring mixed memories. We stayed with dad’s cousin and his wife. They didn’t have electricity. Everything was kerosene and a fire Aga. I still have memories of the fruit cakes and the bread and the roast potatoes that came out of that thing.

Uncle Ross would take us kids out in the ute. He’d drive too fast over sand dunes. The whole aim of the game was to hold on tight enough that you wouldn’t fall out. It was chaos and in some places, sanity is exactly like those dusty dunes, with good sense simply slipping through the hands.

We get gully breezes that are blustery of an evening. They are wonderful and cooling but there is a hush of prayers for protection from bushfire between October through to April, each year. There is a personality in each place and so much of it is based on the availability of water.

When I moved to Sydney, I walked around smiling for the first two years. There is water everywhere. There’s a harbour, there are big rivers, small rivers, creeks, puddles that linger.

I lost my thong when making an unsuccessful crossing of Toongabbie Creek. I was walking the dog and had to walk barefoot home. I think that sentence alone, may be the most Australian thing I will ever say in my life.

The point is, that people who live with water, often take it for granted. They don’t see how precious it is. I know what it’s like to see the last bit of water gone. I’ve been genuinely thirsty in my life and it is a meditation in, and of, itself.

Sydney got rain every afternoon with a tropical storm to boot. It’s glorious. Water everywhere. Green plants, green lawn. Green and blue. Green and blue. Green and blue. It’s like being whacked across the head with happiness. I’m rubbish at humidity. I’ll give it a red hot go for that amount of rain though.

It's winter tonight. Rain taps on Mum's roof while I make notes about solar panels and batteries. I'm listening to abundance while planning for drought and thinking about how I'm going to live through the next round of sunrise. Somehow that feels like Australia.