Australian Weather
In many ways, the wife of cricket star Ian Botham summed up the drawbacks of living in a land which so many former residents see as a nice place to visit - but aggravating in the long term. Botham was keen to take up a lucrative cricketing contract (temporarily) in Queensland . His wife Kathy said: 'I spent four months (in Australia) once, and I was sick of all that blue sky and sunshine. I couldn't wait to get home'.
Sunshine is certainly an attraction for many would-be settlers, though once again outsiders have unrealistic expectations of the weather. In fact, it is a land of extremes. Much of Australia is desert, so most people live on the coast. But more than a quarter of the coastline is in the tropics. It can be sweaty, searingly hot and stormy. In the temperate zones where Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide are located, it can rain heavily for days on end. People are killed and properties ruined by flash floods that occasionally strike in the south and east of Australia, while cyclones are a menace in the north. Bushfires regularly decimate the suburbs of the towns and cities where the danger is magnified because these areas are often densely populated.
