Sunflower oasis provides relief on a dustbowl scorcher

A makeshift pool carved out of an old water tank is the only respite for Clancy Paine and her children in drought-ravaged Narromine.

Siblings Trader, 4, Dolly 7, and Daisy, 5, and their friend Abigail, 7, second left, try to stay cool in their Narromine home’s backyard, where Saturday’s temperature is tipped to hit 46C. Picture: Clancy Paine

A makeshift pool carved out of an old water tank is the only respite for Clancy Paine and her four young children in the drought-ravaged dustbowl town of Narromine in NSW’s central west.

“The kids swim in it and the pony drinks from it in the backyard,” Ms Paine said.

“I would like to put an umbrella in it but I haven’t got one, haven’t had the need for one in a long time.

“We bought here in 2017 — that’s when it stopped raining. We chose to settle then because our eldest daughter was starting kindergarten and we needed a base.

“We have a stock and domestic bore for our house; it’s what we use to water our lawn but we use it wisely. A lot of the town is on water restrictions — it’s not that we’re flushing water around willy-nilly.”

Ms Paine, 34, said as the mercury soared to 44C on Thursday and they were bracing themselves for the temperature to rise to 46C by Saturday that “with heat like that, with the kids outside, it’s big wide sun hats and zinc on their noses, keeping them out of the ­direct heat”.

The Bureau of Meteorology said Saturday was looking to be the height of the weeklong heatwave, with inland parts of NSW, Queensland and northern Vic­toria set to swelter.

Sydney’s centre would benefit from sea breezes, but Penrith and Richmond in the city’s west would be 47C and 46C on Saturday.

BOM meteorologist Dean Narramore said the heat forming over Perth was likely to track east between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. “We can see there’s going to be a large area of heat, but we need to see how much heat is left,” he said. “It’s going to be a very hot week but it’s too early to say.”

Janette Lindesay, from Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, said freak weather systems in the Indian Ocean were combining with a late monsoon to turn up the heat in Australia’s red centre. “What we’re looking at is … an extreme version of a normal summer pattern — it’s a normal summer pattern on steroids.”

Professor Lindesay said warm water off the coast of Africa and cold water off the coast of Indonesia and the Malay peninsula were keeping hot air trapped in central Australia by stopping the onset of the monsoon season.

“What’s happening now is the monsoon is late and that is because of the Indian Ocean Dipole Event. What it involves is two areas across the Indian Ocean that from time to time have large anomalies in temperatures, in ocean ­temperatures.”

Professor Lindesay said the phenomenon was well known but was the strongest in the 60 years it had been measured.