This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Batchelor.

To Jeremy Zakis, New South Wales, we attend to the climate.

It's coming winter where Jeremy lives, and it's coming springtime here in southern New England,

North Hemisphere versus Southern Hemisphere. But I read from Jeremy's

reports that the Metropolitan Weather Service in Australia says this is another unusual year,

year after year of weather patterns that have not been seen before. We begin with Jeremy, who tells me it's a beautiful day in New South Wales.

Jeremy, a good day to you.

Your weather pattern looks serene over where you live.

But north of you, Queensland, what's happening?

Good evening to you, Jeremy.

You know, John, yes, that's right.

It is a beautiful, beautiful clear day here. It's around about 20 degrees Celsius. So talking around about 60 Fahrenheit. No wind whatsoever. Perfect weather for getting out and getting in the guard and just enjoying the sunshine. And that's true right across all of Sydney and most of New South Wales. But if we just go a little bit further north, so we're heading up to the top end,

top right part of the Australian map there,

we're actually starting to see really, really strong monsoonal systems.

Now, we're not talking about as far south as Brisbane,

which we saw in only four weeks ago

when we had a cyclone come very far south

and dump a lot of rain on the metropolitan area.

What we're starting to talk about now is the Cairns, the Townsville, and effectively the very

high peninsula region of Queensland, which is very much the top of Australia. And what started to

happen is that what we thought was going to be effectively a dryish kind of week up in Northern

Australia, because we've

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