55°C ???

Greetings to all co-sufferers under the heat in southeast Australia, maybe the following is a consolation. It’s an excerpt from Charles Sturt’s diary, one of our early explorers. It was the summer of 1844, and he was on the way to his very own Sturts Stony Desert and the (then) feared Simpson.
"The thermometer reading 131ºF {55°C} in the shade…the atmosphere was so dry that the drays all but fell to pieces, every screw in the various boxes was drawn, the horn handles of the instruments and the combs split up into fine laminae, the lead dropped out of the pencils, … the men’s hair and the wool on the sheep ceased to grow, and their finger nails became brittle as glass… terrific hot wind blew across the plains, with nothing to break its force. The thermometer, graduated up to 127ºF {52°C}, burst from the heat, and the ground was so hot that a match dropped upon it ignited immediately…”
Imagine that poor guy without esky, batteries or phone to complain to anyone. I have all that and still feel like above pencil with all sense dropping out of me.
Klaus and Rusty