Lonely, unfit and hooked on air-conditioning - is this the summer of the future?

Bela Stantic did not stop to take in the vistas of Walgett on his great Aussie road trip this summer. The vineyards of Griffith passed in a blur. He stopped at Victoria’s Twelve Apostles, but took a few photos and then left.

Illustration by Richard Giliberto

It was not what the Griffith University professor had planned. But as a monster heatwave baked a crust onto southern Australia, “it was not possible to be outside at all”, he says.

“I couldn’t do anything, I was basically just in the car all the time. Even then I got fried because the sunshine was so hot, it went through the glass,” Stantic recalls.

“When I was planning the trip, Uluru was supposed to be 36 degrees. But when I got to Adelaide the weather prediction said it would be 46 degrees there … I like warm weather but I thought ‘this is extreme’.”

Read the story from The Sydney Morning Herald by Nicole Hasham - “Lonely, unfit and hooked on air-conditioning - is this the summer of the future?”