Thanks to the latterday popularity of Australian "soaps", we are now better informed about that continent than we used to be. Nonetheless, with their "tinnies" and "dags" and a propensity for picnicking at a time of day they seem to call "this avvo", its inhabitants to a large extent still speak a language that the strangers do not know. Meteorology is not immune from antipodean quirks of phrase.
In south-western Australia, for example, a simple sea breeze becomes a medico. The "Fremantle doctor" is often fresh and gusty, and brings a welcome relief to the neighbourhood of Perth on the hot antipodean summer days of our own northern winter months.
But perhaps the most evocative Australian wind phenomenon is the southerly buster, , or "burster" as the more refined among us like to call it. The buster is a surge of cool air that moves rapidly northwards from the polar zones and then along the south-east coast towards
Sydney in the summer time. It is accompanied by squalls and a sudden, rapid drop in temperatures, and the gale-force winds accelerate and intensify as they move inland towards the highlands of New South Wales.
Sydney has about 30 southerly busters every year. The sudden onset, and the characteristic roll-cloud that accompanies a buster, were described graphically more than 100 years ago by an Australian meteorologist, Henry Hunt:
"Afar off this cloud is sharply defined, dark on the edges with lighter shades in towards the centre. The roll is from 30 to 60 miles in length, and as it approaches the wind that has been blowing from the north drops suddenly.
"Immediately under the roll, light clouds rush forward with great velocity only to be thrown back over the top as they reach the front; the wind vane on the Time Ball tower flies to the south, and the wind reaches us on the ground a moment later, and in a few moments is blowing with the full force of a gale."
In the early days of the Australian settlement, a southerly buster approaching Sydney was always heralded by a cloud of reddish dust that emanated from the extensive brickfields in the city's suburbs. The brickfields in that part of Sydney are no more, but the local name for the phenomenon they engendered is still occasionally heard: the brickfielder..
Luckily, however, neither the southerly buster nor a brickfielder is likely to affect the Olympic Games. The buster is a summer phenomenon, usually arriving after some days of hot dusty weather in the region, although when one does arrive unexpectedly it creates major havoc among the sailing boats on Sydney Harbour.