It aint 'arff 'ot mum

'Boo hoo', he said, flicking at his bottom lip, 'toughen up boys, this is springtime! Wait till summer, then it gets hot!' We're in the hottest part of Oz. It can get to 52 degrees here. Do these people have regular skin!

It's very hot.

Phil and I are carrying and laying stone pavers, baking, Anne's helping, melting. This is the Outback and it's 42 degrees celsius. Unprecedented heat. The sun - it beats down with a relentless fury as if to drive us to despair!
No amount of water helps. The mantra 'Pee clear twice a day - hydrate or die' has a curiously forlorn ring to it.
The sweat is pouring off us in rivers, evaporating as soon as it hits the parched, dry earth. A red faced Welshman sits on the back of a Toyota 4x4 and looks buggered.
Our heads are pounding; the rocks we're carrying are blisteringly hot. The earth 'neath our feet scolds us. A cigarette is lit off an all too rosy cheek.
Why are you so cruel mother nature? To harm and torture innocents like this!
Our tenderised flesh grown ever pinker.

Oh, for the goodly rain of home! The miserly sunshine! The gloom of cloudy days!

It's sunshine again tomorrow they say.

Bloody typical.



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The Bushman's Farewell To Queensland

We were given a copy of this poem by Narell Howarth in Upperstone. No one apparently knows who wrote it, but we think it most certainly must have been a Pommie, thus, his inclusion here in the Whinging Poms. We, of course, love Queensland. This fella, you see, well, had a few issues.


The Bushman's Farewell To Queensland
by Anon

Queensland thou art a land of pests
From flies and fleas one never rests
Even now mosquitoes round me revel
In fact, they are the very devil,
Sandflies and hornets just as bad,
They nearly drive a fellow mad.
The scorpion and the centipede
With stinging ants of every breed
Fever and ague with the shakes
Triantelope and poisonous snakes
Goannas, lizards and cochatoos
Bushrangers, lags and jackaroos
Bandicoots and swarms of rats
Bull dog ants and swarms of cats
Stunted timber, thirsty plains
Parched up deserts, scanty rains
There's rivers here you sail ships on
There's nigger women without shirts on
There's humpies, huts and wooden houses
There's men who don't wear trousers
There's Barcoo rot and sandy blight
There's dingos howling half the night
There's curlews wails and croaking frogs
There's savage blacks and native dogs
There's centralists, flowers and stinging trees
There's poisoned grass and Darling peas
Which drive the horses and cattle mad
Make the sheep, just as bad
And then it never rains in reason
There's droughts one year and floods next season
Which wash the squatter's sheepe away
And then there is the devil to pay
To stay in Queensland, Oh land of mutton
I would not give a single button
But bid thee a long farewell
Thous scorching land of sunburnt hell.


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