This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I am John Batchel, off to New South Wales.

Jeremy Zackis joins. It is wintertime in the southern hemisphere. And is it unusual or is it regular?

Jeremy grew up in the south of Australia. He's now in New South Wales. We're going to begin in

Western Australia, however, Perth, the very large city

that's critical for the defense of, not only Australia, but the Alliance. However, there's

been a drought for months from, I believe, South Australia all the way to Western Australia.

Jeremy, a very good day to you. It's wintertime, and I'm unfamiliar with what is regular winter in Perth. Good day to you. Good day, John. Yes, well, in Perth, regular weather during the winter is pretty much regular weather anywhere in Australia. You expect to get a bit of rain across. You get to a little bit of wind coming in.

And when I say a little bit of wind, I should say it's mostly a gale blind from the Indian Ocean.

And the temperatures cool down. However, this winter, we've had almost exactly the opposite of this.

We've had really, really dry temperatures. We've had really warm temperatures. And also,

we've had absolutely no rain. So

poor old Perth and Western Australia has very much been in drought for almost the entire year.

But I can now finally report this week. We are starting to see the rain come into Perth. In fact,

most of Western Australia is starting to get drenching rain across the entire week and probably

for the week after, so at least for the next two weeks, which we are now all holding our fingers

crossed, will actually finally break the drought. But I do have to warn you, John, as we now know,

the Bureau of Meteorology has also warned us. The weather here in Australia is not exactly

the same as it's always been. It's a little bit

kooky, I guess you could say. So while the long-term forecast for Perth is looking really,

really positive right now for rain and it's possibly going to continue, we have learned from

the past that on a dime it can change and can be the complete opposite. So at least for now,

I can say that rain is falling in Perth,

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