The Autumn Of Our Discontent

Sydney swelters and the ruling Liberal Party is bitterly divided.

 

It’s autumn. And strange. The frangipani trees are not losing their leaves but flowering. The bougainvillea are luminescent and the star jasmine promises another burst of high-summer colour.

We awake, again, to a smoke-streaked sky and the smell of burning wood and leaves from big fires across the city’s south-west.

Days are so hot that the weather bureau has brought out a special report that tells us to prepare for the heat to stretch into June. Temperature records are being smashed – again. Monday, April 9, was the hottest April day ever recorded in Sydney, when temperatures at the Bureau of Meteorology Observatory Hill site near Millers Point reached 35.4°C. A couple of days later was the city’s second-hottest April day on record.