The dry Aussie heat can be murderous in summer. Petals shrivel, leaves wilt. Even flies drop dead. Those buzzing creatures that movie soundtracks have used to inform the audience when a body is about to be discovered, zzz, zzz, zzz — even they succumb. At least that’s what I thought until I realised the dead flies were those that had flown in through a window sprayed with Mortein. It was the Mortein got them, not the summer. But everybody and everything else is melting. Humanity is one giant sweaty ice cube on the flow.

It is the El Nino system that’s responsible, say the meteorologists gazing into their barometers. Truthfully, no one really knows who or what El Nino is. Most are willing to hazard a guess that it’s something Spanish. For the rest, as one elderly lady put it, ‘It is what it is, beyond comprehension.’

Those living the Australian Dream will, of course, have a pool in the backyard and life in general will ebb and flow around this structure. I’m not. Living the Aussie Dream, that is. I just happen to be in Australia dreaming of better times. But for those living the dream, the barbecue oven will be a few finger-flicking droplets away.

Incidentally, nobody calls it a barbecue oven. That’s too wordy and, what is more, too prosaic. It’s simply barbie with a lower case and when an Aussie says, ‘Let’s go throw a shrimp on the barbie, mate,’ he’s not in mischievous mood suggesting the daughter’s doll be covered in seafood.

No, an Aussie takes his shrimps seriously. The shrimp is no throwaway item. Another thing: The shrimp is a prawn. Admittedly, it doesn’t have the same ring to it, saying throw another prawn on the barbie. Again, nobody really says that anymore, I guess, because much more than a shrimp is tossed on the barbie. That’s the reality, in this age of reality television etc. So, barbie it is, for short.

This penchant for brevity shouldn’t surprise anyone who has Aussie friends. Many words are shortened for comfort here in a land where anything longer than three syllables is not made to feel terribly welcome. Darling is darl, honey is hon and rigor mortis is, simply, dead. People with names like Anandaramakrishnan and Balasubramaniam had better consider deeply before applying for immigration. Either that, or accept early that re-christening is imminent: Anno and Baloo, or something approximate. Three syllables, max! Anything longer is gonna get the chop.

Barney, my friend, reckons all the blame for this can be laid at the doorstep, not of general Australian laziness, but at the doorstep of one culprit: the summer sun. It’s the wretched sun that makes us that way. It’s the heat that brings on the languor. It’s the heat climaxing in the arms of humidity that induces the torpor that in turn puts every muscle into restraint mode, even the tongue — that most-exercised muscle of all.

So, especially in summer, Anandapadmanabhan is a definite no, no. Ditto anti-establishmentarianism. Although, ironically that’s exactly what we Aussies are. Different, in a likeable way. In an equation it will be written: Down Under = Left of Centre.

“I whinge a lot but I don’t usually hear you complaining,” said Barney, with a flash of insight.

I suppose if you come from the Land of a Hotter Sun, you’re never really going to notice the Aussie heat. It’s twelve years now and Barney has — in the cotton-ball-like lethargy that’s enveloped his mind, induced his thoughts to a stillness. He has forgotten that I once inhabited a city with the exotic initials: DXB. They have a tremendously hot sun there. And if, mathematically, DXB = Ducks Back, it’d be easy to explain how the sweat flowed. Yet, despite it all, I was there for 12 years. And Barney, I know, will be once again hankering for summer, with all its heat, as soon as the icy wintry blasts arrive.

It’s called being human.

Kevin Martin is a journalst based in Sydney, Australia.