Australian - Summer

Then you emerge, salt-stung, and find a stray chip buried in the sand. A seagull watches you with the cold, predatory intelligence of a dinosaur.

One morning in late November, you step outside to hang the washing and the air hits you—not like warmth, but like a held breath. By mid-December, the screen door slams shut with a hollow clack that will become the rhythm of the next three months. The gum trees, ever the drama queens, start shedding bark in long, peeling strips, as if shrugging off last season’s skin. The cicadas begin their relentless, electric sawing, a frequency that bypasses the ears and drills straight into the base of the brain. australian summer

At dusk, the heat relents from a furnace to a slow bake. This is the golden hour. The smell of eucalyptus oil, released by the heat, mixes with the distant charcoal tang of a neighbour’s barbecue (sausages, always burnt on one side, raw on the other). The sprinkler performs its lazy, ticking arc over a patch of couch grass that is already turning yellow despite your best efforts. Someone opens a bottle of something cheap and white. The ice cubes crack. The flies—the persistent, suicidal, face-seeking flies—finally retreat with the light. Then you emerge, salt-stung, and find a stray

You just have to wait for the southerly buster to arrive. By mid-December, the screen door slams shut with

It doesn’t creep in, the Australian summer. It detonates.