Take Me to the River

Twice a day, David Hill records the weather in the Mallee town of Warracknabeal, in north-western Victoria, for the Bureau of Meteorology. A tall, lean man with sandy orange hair and moustache, his weather station - latitude 36? 15 '41'' S, longitude 142? 24' 18'' E - is outside the Agricultural Machinery Museum. At 9 am and 3 pm he walks through a dry, dusty paddock where corellas have been scratching for seed. Raised above the ground is a white slatted box, paint peeling, padlocked and surrounded by chicken wire. It looks like a beehive, but is actually a temperature screen containing a wet-and-dry bulb thermometer, which shows the day's highest and lowest temperatures. Like some shaman of old, Hill estimates visibility, the height of the clouds, where the clouds are coming from, the direction of the wind and its speed in kilometres per hour. The bureau's customised record sheet also requires a description of "phenomena". Circle observation known to have occurred, it reads, before listing the following possibilities: Hail, Snow, Thunder heard, Frost, Dust storm, Mist, Haze, Smoke, Fog, Dew, Strong wind, Gale. Sometimes Hill circles four phenomena in the morning alone.