HEATWAVE

I was asked by the Daily Mercury to do a weekend story on the heatwave that the city of Bangagong is currently experiencing and the effect, if any, it is having on its inhabitants.

You can bet they're expecting me to come up with something glossy, informative yet quirky, being for the weekend edition.

Bangagong is an inland town of 46,735 proud, triumphant residents and dwindling, with your typical history of conflict with the indigenous inhabitants.

Those who've survived the slaughter are looked upon as lazy-no-good-for-nothing bludgers.

The town boasts a customary pub on every street corner, but also features shopping centres of metropolitan standards that would rival those of the major cities. It, of course, considers itself, like all those country towns, to be progressive, modern and well versed in current issues. Just don't go scratching the surface too deeply.

Apart from the long standing abhorrence between the new inhabitants and the survivors, the folks here are pretty laid back except on Friday and Saturday nights when the mercury rises to brawling point.

And it really doesn't matter whether it's in the middle of the coldest winter or in the current heatwave, some things remain constant and are used as a sort of compass to those who've lost direction and are trying to make their way back home.

I'm staying at the Pavilion.

It's a 3 and a half star air-conditioned hotel with an atrium that desperately wants you to feel like you're sitting under a huge marquee overlooking acres of 19^th Century Australian landscape. Fat chance!

It's invested in these gigantic wooden posts and canvas for just that purpose but it's not impressing me in the least; I can see right through it and once you see through something, you see it for what it is and you either take pity on it or you loathe it.

Right now, however, I don't care either way; it's not what's in my sights.

It's Friday and the whole town's deserted except for a barefooted drunk aborigine yelling at imaginary passersby; ghosts from the past, maybe.

It's definitely a ghost town today though; the dry suffocating heat's lured the residents from their homes to the air-conditioned shopping centres on the edge of town.

I'm trying to find something interesting to report about the effect of the heatwave on the locals but nothing comes to mind except for the usual country town dramas which everyone has read ad nauseum.

I'm desperately looking for some seemingly unlikely yet mind-boggling association between the townsfolk's behaviour and the heatwave, but I keep coming up blank and feeling a little like a Seinfeld episode.

I'm going to have to make something up for the readers.

Maybe the heat wave hasn't affected the locals but it has depleted me of every ounce of energy.

All I want to do is to sit under this tree and just stare into space.

I see vague images in the shimmering heat rising off the landscape as I start feeling the vast emptiness across the whole town and begin to understand the reasons why the locals are spending time inside their shopping centres and why the young will look for trouble tonight.