It was 44° on Christmas Day. It really was scary. And the heat is only going to get worse.
Fremantle, WA
I’m Fiona Stanley, I’m 75, I’ve worked for most of my life on the health and wellbeing of young people. I’ve become really passionate about climate change because it’s happening now and it’s impacting people around Australia.
Last summer was the hottest summer on record for us in Perth. The whole summer was hot and we had a heatwave over the Christmas period that lasted nearly 10 days. It was the worst heat I’ve experienced.
The heat was really hard on old people. Unlike a lot of people, I had some fans in my house, but even my fans were totally inadequate for that kind of heat. Everyone’s houses got so hot, some days I could hardly move. If you didn’t have air conditioning, old people were advised to spend the entire day in shopping malls to escape the heat. Are we seriously going to tell old people to just sit in shopping centres all day? That’s totally inadequate.
Old people weren’t able to leave the house during the day because it was too hot – we had to go early in the morning or after sunset. It was unbearable to be stuck in the house every day. And if you live alone, you’re suddenly sitting alone all day for multiple days. What does that do to your mental health?
I live in Fremantle and there’s a story called the Fremantle Doctor which is the afternoon sea breeze that comes every day to cool off the town. But during the heatwave it didn’t come at all.
I’ve never experienced heat like that. Some of the nights didn’t get below 33°, people weren’t sleeping. It was 44° on Christmas Day. It really was scary. And the heat is only going to get worse. The number of deaths from heatwaves is already going up.
The young people are going to bear the brunt of all this. I’ll be dead before the really ghastly stuff happens. But they’ll have to live through that. They’re looking at a lifetime of summers like that.
During the pandemic, most Australian politicians initially loved the science – they looked at the science and used it to back up their Covid policies like lockdowns and Jobkeeper. I hoped that the politicians would continue to value science after the pandemic, particularly climate science, and convert it into action. That has not happened.
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I live on 6 acres of farmland, adjacent to state forest. This summer has been unlike any other. We had a dry summer storm spark a bushfire that came so close to houses. We’ve had three heatwaves this summer. Now, still no rain and the bore which supplies my house (which has been operational since the 70s) has run dry. All of the dams on surrounding farms are dry (which my neighbours haven’t seen before). Trees are dying in the bush. Farmers are having emergency meetings about the lack of feed available for their livestock. Every day, emus and kangaroos are coming into the paddock in search of food and water. Our whole community is incredibly anxious because if a bushfire starts before the rains come, we are all totally screwed. There are no dams that contain any water for the waterbombers to access to help fight any fires that break out. We can’t just let this be the new normal.
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