Discussion: Austrailian weather

Hi Blair, my daughter Emma has a geography task for school this week which is to research Australian weather and climate. She needs to create a poster about either cyclones, bushfires, droughts or any combination of the three. We wondered if you would like to contribute anything to it? (She's 10 by the way!)
Cheers, Dave

Interesting coincidence Dave. My son Sam (also 10) has a school task this week to do a presentation about a natural disaster - either in the form of a media report (presentation), poster or a magazine article. Must be a go to activity for schools in UK and Aust.

Sadly Emma will have plenty of subject matter. There's some stuff on Australian Geographic website about the recent fires..

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/

Emma's got a whole term on Australian geography: the first week was "where is Australia?" (I think we managed OK on that one!), last week was about different landforms and river basins, which was interesting, and this week it's the weather/climate. It then moves on to things like what's it like to live in an Australian city compared to the countryside, using Sydney and Picola as examples. It looks quite interesting!

We did a report on the extreme heat and fire weather which will be good if you're looking for specific numbers, although the text is a bit on the technical side. Not so much background educational material on our site these days so the other sites will be good background.

Drop me an e-mail (blair.trewin(at)bom.gov.au) if you want to set up a call and we can make the time differences work (evening for me/morning for you should work).

Picola's definitely an obscure spot - I had to look up where it was (which in turn reminded me that I went through there last August). According to Wikipedia, "The Picola Hotel offers a variety of services, from meals and functions, weekly raffles, and is now the local milk bar, community postal agent and V/Line ticket agency. " - sounds like a classic country pub (especially the meat raffle).

what's it like to live in ... Sydney

Pretty average.

Picola...

My sister used to live on the Murray Valley Highway just to the East of Picola, so we had quite a few bike ride through the area, also had an Old Time Dance back in time, so been there for that as well

My O-Level geography curriculum in the UK in 1961 had the climate and geography of SW Western Australia as a major theme. I must have been impressed!