It’s just past 9am on this 3rd of January, 2050. The temperature is already in the mid-30s with a high of somewhere north of 43º expected by mid-arvo.

This is the fourth heatwave of the summer, expected to last another three to four days, and it won’t be the last. Likely it won’t even be the worst, as another, more intense heat dome over the central desert looks to be headed our way for early next week.

I’m in my bedroom, shades drawn, aircon on its lowest ‘eco’ setting, keeping the room dry enough and cool enough that I can operate reasonably normally. But heat affects me. Even when I can hide in here, I still have to perform tasks out there and where that heat is unrelenting – baked into every surface after a month of punishing temperatures – I can feel it almost physically striking me.

For a long time now – maybe twenty-five years – I’ve known that my heart doesn’t like this sort of heat, that’ll I’ll get dizzy and things will ‘white out’ for the briefest of moments and I’ll suddenly sit down – wherever I happen to be – until it passes. What was occasional back then feels entirely normal and ordinary now. I really can’t handle this sun or this heat or this summer or this climate and neither can I just hide until it’s all over, because sunset doesn’t end it, nor deepest night; only the slow tilt of the seasons finally forces us away from the direct glare of the sun, something that’s months away and every year recedes even further into autumn.

And I’m lucky: I have an air conditioned bedroom. I can afford electricity. Most days I can cower indoors until it feels ‘safe enough’ to go outside. Others aren’t so lucky, spending their days doing their best to stay cool enough long enough to make it through the next heatwave, bodies burning from the inside out: heart attacks and seizures signs that their internal organs age at an accelerated pace, worn down by heat stress.

It’s boring in this bedroom, and beyond boring having to spend nearly half of the year protected within its walls and air conditioning. I used to be happy to be outdoors: running, riding, swimming, walking, visiting. No one does much of that any more – especially at my age – in these months. We wait for winter, celebrating the cool by living all the life we postponed during the heat. It means that our whole culture ticks along on a yearly heartbeat reversed from the pattern I knew as a child, where outdoor activities filled my summers, while in winter I stayed indoors.

Instead, we do whatever we can to endure the summer, with each summer more ferocious than the last. It will not end – or rather, I will not live to see it end. I wonder if there comes a point beyond all endurance? When the power cuts out. When the heat slowly seeps in. When this bedroom transforms from sanctuary to kiln. And I the broken pottery within.