It’s summer and the temperatures in south-east Australia are in the 40s Celsius and above 100 Fahrenheit. The country’s climate catastrophists are pointing to ‘climate change’ as the cause.

But I remember the summers of my childhood in 1950s Sydney being unbearable hot. Bushfires raged everywhere. We often went barefoot and without shirts. In the evenings, we played outside until parents forced us in to sleep in bedrooms that were like ovens. No airconditioning then. Pete’s family (third from the left) once slept outside in the backyard, it was so hot. The photo above was taken of the Lane Cove gang in the summer of 1954/55.