In summers past, say long-term residents, the temperature usually fell to 15☌ at night, but high maximums these days are accompanied by high minimums. January is typically when Alice people flee to the coast to avoid the heat, but this year it’s even hotter and more humid than I remember it during the noughts. I first moved here in 2003, and even after I shifted to Melbourne in 2010 I was never entirely absent, returning to Central Australia every few months to work on a research project.

I’ve been back in Alice Springs since October 2018 to make repairs to my unit and live cheaply while I finish writing a book, Into the Loneliness, about two women who roamed outback Australia last century.

Patrons line up well before opening time and then spend most of the day inside, charging phones, watching old westerns and listening to bush bands on computers, or sleeping in armchairs they’ve dragged beneath air-conditioning vents. Since Christmas Eve we’ve had twelve days of temperatures above 40☌, including two record-breaking maximums of 45.6.

It’s January 2019, and the public library where I’m employed in Mparntwe Alice Springs heaves with people escaping the furnace outside.

Wild at heart series 2007 cast