When I return I pledge to tell you a bit more about Melbourne (and about the book, yes, yes), of which I've suddenly realized I've given a most superficial picture. Just the languages on this cut-out sign (part of a special insert on preparing yourself for possible bush fires in today's paper) tell you more about Melbourne, or about more Melbournes, than anything you've heard from me: Italian, Greek, Arabic, Vietnamese, Chinese and Hebrew. If I forget, hold me to it.My final thoughts about Advent in this part of the world are colored by the almost apocalyptic feeling of a country drying up, and now burning, all around. Smoke from the fires covered Melbourne yesterday, bathing everything in a greyish twilight yellow and tasting of ash. Mild weather has kept the fires from doing too much damage these last days, but a new heat wave, which today has taken Melbourne temps up to 37, promises new horror. One possible horror would be if the fires contaminated Melbourne's already much depleted main reservoir - they're practically lapping at its shores already. Even without that, we switch January first to a stage 3 water crisis, where gardens can be watered at most twice a week; this still verdant city will look more and more like a sepia print. Scary reports of the warmest winter in hundreds, even thousands of years in the Alps, in Russia, etc. and the imminent decimation of the world's fish populations add to the sense of peril.
In the midst of all this, it turns out it's quite a wonderful thing to hear a brass band playing Christmas carols around a street corner.
