wash day

This has been a meltingly hot day in Sydney - the thermometer reached 42 C this afternoon, which translates into something like 107 F.  So although I did take one or two pictures from our hotel room balcony of people cramming themselves into the sea on Coogee beach to keep cool, and although once it was dark it was just about bearable to walk around, it was not exactly a day for prowling with a camera.   It was, however, a good drying day - if one turned one's head in the other direction from the sea.   Australia is a great country for outdoor clothes drying: so very many suburban and country back yards have a national icon sitting in the middle of the coarse grass - a Hills Hoist rotary clothes line, spinning gently round and round.   Here, however, some rather Italianate straight lines have been stretched across for the pegging out of clothes - which can't have taken long to dry, at all.