Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/505

Rh violence. It was thirty miles an hour at the start, but before it got through with its performance it was sixty or seventy miles. It has been known to go to ninety or a hundred miles, and on one occasion it reached one hundred and fifty miles an hour, and did a great deal of damage.

"The thermometer fell more rapidly than the barometer had done. In the morning about nine o'clock the mercury was at 89° Fahrenheit, and it remained about that figure until the wind went around to the south a little past noon. In less than an hour it had fallen twenty degrees, and in another hour twenty more. These sudden changes are the trying features of the Australian climate, but the people say nobody suffers from them except in discomfort.

"They tell us that the mercury has been known to drop thirty degrees in half an hour, and the readings of the thermometer at noon and midnight sometimes show a variation of ninety-nine degrees. William Howitt mentions experiencing a temperature of 139° in the shade, and it is no uncommon thing for the mercury to mount to 130°. There is an official record of 179° in the sun and 111° in the shade in South Melbourne, and at the inland town of Deniliquin of 121° in the shade.

"The burster ended towards evening with a heavy fall of rain that