Summertime
Even with skin the colour and translucency of a Vietnamese rice-paper roll, I’ve always looked forward to summer. In England, where I grew like an albino bean, summer meant enchanted long-shadowed evenings that seemed to last forever, because the sun didn’t set until after ten at night (thus making amends for winter, when darkness smacked down at four pm like a bank teller’s bullet-proof window).
In Australia, summer to me means the end-of-the-year Christmas slow-down coinciding nicely with the heat turning the dial on my pussy Anglo metabolism to ‘coma’. I lie about fanning myself languorously, like Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, mewling that there’s too much cricket on the television. I lack the melanin to be a beach bunny, but enjoy the lethargy of summer, the barbies, the swimming, and the imperative to slow the hell down for five minutes. Summer is the council-laid speed bump in the school zone of my life.
My point is that, even as someone who is built for the Australian summer in the same way that Tiger Woods is built for fidelity, I get it. Summer here is beyond important; it’s archetypal, it’s borderline sacred, and if Australia went out for cigarettes one day and never came back, ‘summer’ would be at the top of the list of identifying characteristics on the missing persons report. Closely followed by ‘male’, ‘low self-esteem’ and ‘check the pubs first’.
Our celebrated laid-back attitude must surely come from eternal summers of lazy sport, cruising around with the windows down, and creamy coloured milk cascading down a Big M bikini girl’s seventies bustline. Paul Kelly’s written about 100 songs that reference summer, which makes it close to scripture in this country. Take away summer and what have we got? Some darling laneway cafes, AFL, and remounts of Broadway musicals where local actors can showcase their American accents.
We’re about to find out, however. Summer’s lost its shine as surely as any politician caught having a three-way on their office desk with a waitress and a staple gun. Summer’s reputation has been chipped away for a decade or more by the dots irrevocably being joined between sunbaking and your skin turning into a melanoma lasagne. This was spinnable, though – wear sunscreen, a hat and don’t be a moron, and summer’s back in the ‘good time to be had by all’ book.
The drought, too, has been battering, but could still be rationalised as part of Australia’s natural cycle. We do drought. Driest continent on earth yada yada (no one really counts Antarctica). As long as there’s cricket, the beach, and enough cos for our Caesar salads, we might not like it, but we get it.
The sucker punch for summer, however, was last year’s bushfire season. Anticipation has evaporated to be replaced by fear. A couple of scorchers in a row, and all we’re thinking is ‘Where is it going to burn?’ and ‘How many people are going to die?’. All it needs is lightning, or some mentally below par cockhead with a grudge and some kero, and half of whatever remains unburned from last year goes up like a bride’s nightie.
Summer is no longer a time to relax, unwind, and forget your troubles. Summer is now the biggest trouble we’ve got. Summer approaches and we tense, waiting for the blow to fall. Summer now promises inferno and catastrophe, horribly wounded wildlife, entire families immolated in their cars, and townships vaporised as if by alien attack. The Australian summer has morphed into a disaster movie franchise with a sequel each and every year.
This is not great for tourism. Or our nerves. Or whatever is left of our chlamydia-ridden native fauna. The bugger is, there’s nothing we can do about it, and our national identity is in the process of changing forever. Paul Kelly, that prescient stunner, wrote about it in ‘Melting’ with Monique Brumby in 1995.
There was a hill
Black and smoky at the end of the day
We watched the fire trucks go back on down the road
We heard them calling out our names
We were standing in the shadows
melting, melting.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Fiona Scott-Norman is a Melbourne-based writer and broadcaster. Her book, ‘50 Reasons to Quit/Keep Smoking’, is published by Affirm Press. Visit her website.
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