Expat from Hartlepool describes soaring temperatures and a new threat to Australia as it faces more than just the pandemic

That’s the news from Hartlepool expat Joe Richmond who praised the ‘lucky country’ for almost having Covid-19 defeated.

But there is a new threat as the Australian summer approaches, said Joe.

Temperatures are rocketing and they climbed to 118 degrees Fahrenheit in New South Wales and Victoria before the height of the season had even been reached.

Joe, 83, who was raised in Hartlepool and went to Dyke House School, has regularly spoken to the Hartlepool Mail to describe life in Australia and said: “It is very hot in Perth now. Today it was about 34 degrees I think, the pool water was 30 degrees.”

The country has had 28,536 coronavirus cases and 909 deaths but Joe added: “Not many have it now, unlike the U.K. and the rest of the world,

"Compared to most we are indeed a lucky country.”

But climate change is a big issue and Joe said: “I am nearly certain that all Australian major cities now depend totally on desalinated sea water for their daily use.

"Western Australia built a desalinisation plant about 15 years ago and have built another since. If you don’t get rain for up to 6 months what else can you do?

“In Oz we have a constant fight against bush fires that can and do burn for months.

"I think we are also having a lot of problems with the Great Barrier Reef that is one of the seven wonders of the natural world. It is as big as Italy, but through rising temperatures it is in trouble.

"That Reef is about 1200 miles long, and brings in millions from tourism every year 25 per cent of which comes from foreign tourists.”

But there are still many aspects of Australian life to enjoy in what Joe describes as a ‘unique country’.

"Oz is a truly wonderful country, unique in a lot of ways, For instance which other country has kangaroos, koala bears, wallabies and snakes that can kill you in seconds?

"Most I think know all about these, but If I asked which country has the biggest camel population, which one would you say. Not Oz I bet,

"But it is. There are over 3 million wild camels, left over from the days when we had no vehicles, and horses could not stand the Aussie heat.”

Joe lives in Perth in Australia and is a former resident of Brougham Terrace in Hartlepool.

He was brought up in town during the years of the Second World War and still remembers ‘being dragged out of bed, in the middle of the night, as German bombers tried to blow up the ICI in Billingham, and the shipyards in Hartlepool’.

Joe left school at 15 to become an apprentice welder in the shipyards before becoming a Gunner in the 2nd Royal Horse Artillery.

In the late 1950s, he got a job on the North Yorkshire Moors building a BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station). He later worked on jobs all over the country before being offered a job in 1986 in Western Australia as a welding instructor.

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