Melbourne has been enjoying a week or so of wonderfully warm days in the mid to upper 20s and even a day of 34 but today it was so hot that breathing through your mouth turned your tongue into parched leather in two inhales. Your lips wrinkle and crack and your skin, even though you know you are sweating, is bone dry. The only place that the sweat is not instantly evaporated from is the shaded valley between your breasts and the dip at the top of your ass. Today, according to The Age weather page, it got to 41 degrees Celsius, 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
The temp itself isn’t enough to cause the instant dehydration of living tissue, it’s the North wind coming off of the vast desert that forms the heart of Australia. The northerlies have only just started to blow here and even the sounds they make is dry. Rustling of shed reptile skin, grains of sand rubbing across flat tables of stone and over the tops of dunes, dry leaves tumbling across the ground, all of these can be heard in the sound of the north wind through a eucalypt tree. And the smell….warm dust with a hint of Vic’s vapo rub.
I love every second of it.
