Mo Laethanta Saoire: Cork-based Australian writer JR Thorp on Sydney summers
Jennifer Thorp. author of Learwife, has been based in Cork in recent years. Picture: Cathal Noonan
I grew up on what was once the distant easternmost tip of Greater Sydney Harbour, in a place that used to be the exclusive province of fishermen, antisocial marsupials and the Navy, and has now, in the manner of many such areas, been enclosed by Sydney’s formidable sprawl. The fishermen’s cottages are now bijou real estate and the waterfront views are surveyed by millionaires, instead of furious feral cats and the occasional illegal shrimping operation. It’s been eleven years since I lived in Australia, but the memories of summer on that salt-crusted spit remain.
Australia in the summer months is an entire ecosystem built around road-shimmering heat. Various animals and insects depend on temperatures that will make the steering wheel of your car too hot to touch. You can easily tell that the mercury has gone above 28 degrees, for instance, because that’s the point when male cicadas will begin their creaking battery of song to attract mates, walloping your earlobes from every shrub. In Ireland, the mark of summer is long, glimmering hours of sunlight till late; in Australia, it’s the cicadas starting their hollering just after sunrise, as you stumble out of bed to an already-parched day.
