Oodnadatta holds the record for Australia’s hottest temperature and it looks set to get even warmer

The welcome sign to this tiny outback town proudly proclaims it as “Australia’s hottest, driest town” but its 60-year record may soon be broken.

The record for Australia’s hottest summer temperature was set in 1960 in the tiny outback of Oodnadatta in South Australia and it’s a record the locals proudly own.

A sign welcoming visitors proclaims: “You are now in Oodnadatta, Australia’s hottest, driest town!”

This remote outpost, located along an unsealed road and kept alive by tourist trade on the famous Oodnadatta Track, is a place where only hardy souls can survive. It regularly experiences temperatures above 40C and holds Australia's record for the hottest temperature ever recorded — 50.7C at Oodnadatta Airport on January 2, 1960.

As climate change ramps up, locals will be in line for even more discomfort, and the record it boasts could soon tumble.

The town is one of several remote areas included in what’s known as South Australia’s unincorporated area, which covers about 60 per cent of the state’s land area but is only home to just under 4000 people.

According to data provided to news.com.au exclusively from the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, by around 2050, the hottest day of summer in this vast region is expected to be one of the highest in the country, with an average peak of 46.7C.

Other areas that are expected to achieve even higher temperatures are Northern Territory’s MacDonnell (47C) and Queensland’s Diamantina and Bulloo (47C).

The sign that greets visitors to Oodnadatta. Source: Peter Moore

In other states, Roxby Downs is expected to experience the highest average peak of 46C in South Australia, while Western Australia’s Morawa will get a peak of 46C, New South Wales’ Central Darling (46C), Victoria’s Mildura (45C), the Australian Capital Territory (36C) and Tasmania’s Southern Midlands (33C).

In total, unincorporated SA is expected to experience a whopping 59 days over 35C by around 2050.

Oodnadatta is home to about 130 mainly Indigenous residents. Despite the hardship of living in such extreme temperatures, locals say there is pride in the town’s record-breaking status.

“It’s kind of strange but we are proud of it, it gives us a point of difference,” Peter Moore, owner of the Pink Roadhouse in Oodnadatta, told news.com.au.

“We don’t want it to topple (the record) and we’ll deny it if it does, we’ll say ‘you bloody bastards’, we’ll say ‘they breathed on the thermometer’.”

However, it looks like Oodnadatta may have some serious rivals for its “hottest town” title.

The hottest day of a typical summer is expected to increase by 2C in the state’s unincorporated area, which includes Oodnadatta, by around 2050, up from 44.6C in 1986-2005.

Other areas are expected to see even larger rises.

These include many South Australian local government areas such as Kimba and Peterborough, which are expected to see increases of about 2.3C, NSW’s Broken Hill (2.3C) and Western Australia’s Gnowangerup (2.2C).

In other states, Queensland’s Bulloo is expected to see the biggest increase (2C), while the LGAs of Mansfield, Mildura and Towong will experience the highest rise in Victoria (1.9C). The Australian Capital Territory, which does not have any LGAs, will see an increase of 1.9C, while the Northern Territory’s Alice Springs will rise by 1.8C and Tasmania’s Burnie by an average of 1.5C.

‘Your body does acclimatise’

If the world follows a medium emissions scenario, which assumes no climate action is taken until after 2050 with the world waiting until 2100 to reach net zero, average summer temperatures in South Australia’s Unincorporated Area are expected to rise by 1.5C to 35.7C.

The region is also expected to get around 12 extra 40-degree days — it already gets an average of around 18 a year.

While the numbers may seem torturous to some Australians, Mr Moore is not too worried.

“Life goes on (on days over 40C), we tend to get all our physical outside work done in the morning or late afternoon,” he said.

“But your body does acclimatise … you’ve got eskimos living in temperatures we wouldn’t consider.

“The explorers used to come through this area but they had no choice — they were wearing woollen undergarments – whereas we can shuffle around in thongs and footy shorts.

“Make no mistake, it does get hot and we do drink beer on a really hot day but you do get used to it.”

Peter Moore and his wife Jen outside The Pink Roadhouse in Oodnadatta.

The 72-year-old said the lack of humidity also made the hot temperatures more bearable.

“The heat we get here is a clear heat, we don’t have a wet season, we haven’t had recordable rain since February,” Mr Moore said.

While Mr Moore believes the town can handle an increase in temperatures he thinks Australia does need to act on climate change.

“The current government is definitely not active really, they talk about it but they are not really active in sourcing renewable energy and people tend to do it themselves,” he said.

Mr Moore spends about $80,000 a year on electricity for his businesses in Oodnadatta, run through a generator that uses diesel fuel.

He would prefer to switch to renewables, and in Oodnadatta the most obvious option would be solar panels, but said the cost was prohibitive as they used so much electricity and would also still need to keep a back-up generator.

He has no doubt climate change is already happening.

“We’re just finding that already we are getting most days over 30C, which is unheard of (at this time of the year) since I first came to the area in 1993/94,” he said.

“We’re getting them sooner and they are lasting longer, there’s no doubt about that.”