AUSTRALIAN HEAT WAVE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2815, 26 February 1908, Page 12

AUSTRALIAN HEAT WAVE.

(From Our Own Cobbebpokdknt.) WELLINGTON, February 13. A Wellington man who baa just returned! from Australia has been giving the Dominion some idea of how hot it was in Melbourne recently. He said he would not visit Melbourne in January again fey £1000. It was so hot that the people could not sleep on the top floors of the hotels, and to make matters worse it was impossible to leave the bedroom windows open at night because of the northerly wind, which swept the city like a. blast from a { furnace. From about January Bto January 20 the thermometer ranged from 103deg to 113deg in the shade. It had been ai hot for a day or two before, but not since the sixties had there been so continuous ! a spell. It was the accumulated heat j that proved so dreadful in the city. The cemetery authorities had to engage 17 extra sextons to dig graves, go heavy was themortality list, and heat apoplexy developed into an epidemic. A Wellington lady and gentleman thought they would be able to get a breath of air by taking a tram ride on the front "«eat, but so scorching was the blast that they were forced to get inside the car to I a^oid the searing wind. The newspapers j announced that people would be allowed to sleep in the public parks and that the police would protect them, and hundreds availed themselves of the opportunity to gasp in the open instead of within doors.

A returned Wellington resident eaid* that he visited the Brighton and South, Melbourne beaches early one morning in, search of a cool spot, and saw some thousands of people lying out upon the beach, endeavouring to get a little sleep. Tho children suffered most severely. "I saw one woman in a side street," said the informant, " bathing her baby's head with! water under a verandah as the poor little thing gasped for breath, and I wondered how the poor were faring when others who could afford to stay at a good hotel were suffering. It must have been terrible for them all. Some of the warehouses practically suspended business, the schools closed up, and the theatres were deserted. Melbourne will long remember the terrible January she ha« just passed through."