In the latest in our series on life-changing summers, novelist Dominic Hoey writes about an intense and disturbing heatwave in Melbourne.
The heatwave lasted five days.
Before that, I thought I knew about heat. I’ve been to deserts, spent a lot of time in Northland, went through a phase wearing puffer jackets in summer. But this was different, like being cupped in the clammy hands of Melbourne city.
On the first day of the heatwave me and my flatmate lay in our underwear, beneath the ceiling fan in the lounge, doing coke and telling stories that were a cocktail of memory and bullsh**. He was a student even though we were both in our early thirties. Every week I would ask him what he studied but it never made any sense.
“I thought the apocalypse would be more exciting,” he said, wiping sweat off his face with a tea towel. This was back when the end of the world seemed like the future’s problem.
My back was killing me and I had lost heaps of weight. I blamed the work. The kitchens. Maybe the drugs. At first people said I looked good, but as the weight kept dropping away the compliments turned to concern. But I worked in a restaurant from lunch until midnight, so I didn’t have time to go see a doctor.
On the second day of the heatwave the trams and trains stopped running. Something to do with the metal of the tracks bending. I texted the head chef at work.
“Do we have to come in?”
“Yep.” I knew this was illegal. But we weren’t technically employed so we didn’t have any rights. I walked through the empty streets. The concrete shimmering.
Everywhere was closed except our restaurant, so we were busier than usual.
The kitchen had no extractor fan. On our breaks we’d pour water over our chef jackets. They would be dry within minutes. Everyone was red faced and glassy eyed. “I feel sorry for my underwear” the waiter said, taking three giant plates with little towers of food in the centre.
On the third day of the heatwave I started getting a rash, a crimson cloud all over my stomach and waist. When I got to work I showed the other chefs. They all lifted up their jackets. Everyone had the same thing.
That night, me and my flatmate drank beers in the backyard. Insects that could probably kill us called to one another. It was after midnight but it felt like you could get sunburnt.
“I reckon you got cancer,” he said, looking at my skeletal frame.
“At least they got air conditioning in the hospital.” But it was too hot to laugh. So we finished our beers listening to the music of the bugs.
On the fourth day of the heatwave me and my flatmate went down to the Fitzroy pools before my shift. We stood shoulder to shoulder with the hundreds of other people in the tepid water. “I’d say this water is 90 percent piss,” my flatmate said.
Work felt like being locked in a parked car. Everyone had plastic containers filled with ice water in their station. Just before service I went on a break.
I used to pretend I smoked so I could duck out more often. In the alleyway behind the kitchen I sat down and felt something crack in my hip. When I tried to stand up my legs gave out. A waitress helped me to my feet.
“Is it the heat?” she asked, her face slick with sweat.
“I don’t think so.”
I shuffled back into the kitchen
“I think I need to go to the hospital,” I said to the head chef.
“Nah,” he said, pointing to the machine spitting out dockets. So I went back to my station and made little towers of food on giant plates.
On the fifth day of the heatwave I couldn’t get out of bed. My flatmate tried to help me but it was no use. He sat on the edge of the mattress.
“Maybe you should quit,” he said.
“And do what?”
“Go back to New Zealand, finish your book.”
I texted the head chef.
“I can’t walk.”
“Sh*t,” he texted back.
A few days later my flatmate was pushing me through the airport in a wheelchair. The city had returned to normal. It was still hot enough to kill the grass, but everyone had to go back to work.
“Hope you don’t die,” he said as I got up and limped towards security.
By winter I'd been diagnosed with a bone disease and put on medication. My back was too messed up for me to work in kitchens. I got on the sickness benefit and lay around my mate's house in the forest, shivering and writing my first novel.
Dominic Hoey is the author of several books including Poor People With Money (Penguin 2022). He has a new novel due to come out later this year.
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