Topic: mango madness (Read 1559 times)

ada · on: September 27, 2006, 12:17:51 AM

We're already sliding into a long, hot summer. Already people are muttering about global warming and climate change and freaky weather.

Last Sunday an evil hot wind blew in from the west, the sort of wind that fans bushfires and riots and drags a southerly buster in its wake.

The water in the harbour that weekend was so cold it took your breath way. The sea was choppy from the wind and grey as the heavy sky.

You can walk along a bush track and dive in from the old wooden wharf at the end. You can swim 200 metres to shore imagining sharks and stingrays but it's only the seaweed brushing against your bare belly.

The water is so cold it takes your breath away but when you arrive panting at the shore the heat is oppressive. The water evaporates off you so fast you're left with a crust of salt on your skin.

Up the Top End there are places so hot the temperature will kill you or send you mad. They've got a name for it: mango madness.

The beaches at Darwin are so beautiful and inviting with their white sand and cold crystal water you'll weep with desire, but you don't dare go in because the box jellyfish lie in wait.

Drive out to the bush at Kakadu the billabongs beckon, or the ominously named Alligator river that fronts the huge escarpment bordering Arnhem land, but six metre salties also lurk in the waters.

The heat makes people in the city mad too.

It was on a hot summer night that the riots broke out. I woke up to the sound of choppers and looking out from my balcony I saw spotlights sweeping over the Block. The train station was burning.

The tragic case of teenager T J Hickie sparked the riots, chased to his death by police, said locals facing off against scared-looking cops in riot gear that night.

The cops said it wasn't true. The kid simply took off on his bike when he saw them, they said.

They couldn't help it that his bike hit a curb, sending him flying through the air and impaling him on a cast iron fence post.

It was a hot day too in The Shire when gangs of drunken sunburnt locals draped in the Australian flag attacked muslims with beer bottles and screeched at them to *** off back where they came from.

Summer time, and the living ain't getting any easier.

Bring it on.

Piano Forum

Piano Street Magazine:
When Practice Stagnates – Breaking the Performance Ceiling: Robotic Training for Pianists