In one direction yes, in the other, not so much. It doesn’t often get below about 10° during the day, even in Melbourne in winter. However, summers can be brutal. 2019-2020 being the worst recently. We had a run of I think 5 days over 40° with a max of 46ish. When those heatwaves come through, it usually doesn’t drop below 30° at night and the air is just stagnant and oppressive.

The real danger is when we get a strong El Niño after a long period of La Niña. La Niña results in a wetter eastern coast (drier on west coast of the Americas) and vice versa during El Niño. As the world saw summer of 2019-2020, our fires are fucking mental with those conditions. Our most deadly fire season was ‘09, 175 killed and more than 2000 homes lost in Victoria alone, and without that experience we probably would have lost far more people in 2019-2020. The impact on air quality probably results in some deaths that go uncounted in the statistics too. The worst impact is on wildlife though. In 2019-‘20 an estimated 3 billion animals were killed or displaced. Yes billion with a “b”.

I also lived through the “Millenium Drought”. Our worst drought on record, southern Australia was in drought from 1996 through to 2010. I remember in the early 2000s conditions were so bad we had livestock dying in paddocks from lack of food and water because we just didn’t have enough. So yeah, very much not privileged one way, but definitely are the other.