This outback town's heat can cook eggs - but its cool secrets will surprise you
Mount Isa sizzles in summer. Just ask caravan park co-owner and Outback Queensland ambassador Kylie Rixon who once forgot to collect her chooks' eggs (or bum-nuts, to use her colourful parlance) from their fluffy butt hut (chook pen) on a day when the mercury hit 50 degrees Celsius. By the time she fetched them in the afternoon and cracked open one, it fell out of its shell already cooked.
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Herald Sun
2 days ago
- Herald Sun
Muslim pilgrims pray at Mount Arafat in hajj apex
Don't miss out on the headlines from Breaking News. Followed categories will be added to My News. Muslim pilgrims prayed atop Mount Arafat on Thursday during the high point of the annual hajj pilgrimage, as Saudi officials called on participants to refrain from being outside during the hottest hours of the day. Thousands of pilgrims began to gather before dawn around the hill and the surrounding plain where the Prophet Mohammed is believed to have given his last sermon. While some arrived early to take advantage of the relatively cool morning, carrying colourful umbrellas, many pilgrims will remain for hours of prayers and Koran recitals until the evening in the most arduous portion of the hajj. After sunset they will head to Muzdalifah, halfway between Arafat and the sprawling tent city of Mina, where they will gather pebbles so they can perform the symbolic "stoning of the devil". "This is something that I used to see every year on the TV screen during hajj and I always thought: 'I wish I could be here'," said 33-year-old Ali from Pakistan, one of 1.5 million pilgrims who had arrived in Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage. "I've been trying to get here... for the past 3 years," he added as he gazed at the mount. "I feel very blessed." Hundreds of pilgrims dressed in white dotted the mount itself, with many more at its foot praying or taking pictures. Earlier this week, Saudi authorities called on pilgrims to stay inside their tents between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm on Thursday, when the desert sun is at its harshest. Fans spraying mist and providing cool air were dispersed at the foot of the mount. Temperatures this year have already exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) as one of the world's largest annual religious gatherings, bringing together devotees from around the globe, kicked off earlier this week Officials have beefed up heat mitigation efforts aiming to avoid a repeat of last year's hajj, which saw 1,301 pilgrims die as temperatures reached 51.8C. "I came here early to (avoid) the sun and later I will pray inside my tent," said 54-year-old Adel Ismail, from Syria. To make this year's pilgrimage safer, authorities have expanded infrastructure, deployed thousands of extra personnel and relied on an arsenal of high-tech tools to help better manage crowds. Authorities have mobilised more than 40 government agencies and 250,000 officials, doubling their efforts against heat-related illness following the lethal heatwave of 2024. Shaded areas have been expanded by 50,000 square metres (12 acres), thousands more medics will be on standby, and more than 400 cooling units will be deployed, the hajj minister has told AFP. Through tears of joy, Iman Abdel Khaleq said she had wanted to perform the hajj for 10 years and was overwhelmed with emotion as she arrived at Arafat. "It's a big dream for me that I had almost given hope up of realising," the woman in her fifties told AFP from the foot of the mount. Authorities said a majority of the deaths in 2024 were among unregistered pilgrims who lacked access to amenities like air-conditioned tents and buses. This year, they have also cracked down on unregistered pilgrims looking to sneak into Mecca, relying on frequent raids, drone surveillance and a barrage of text alerts. Hajj permits are allocated to countries on a quota basis and distributed to individuals by a lottery. But even for those who can obtain them, the steep costs prompt many to attempt the hajj without a permit, even though they risk arrest and deportation if caught. Saudi Arabia earns billions of dollars a year from the hajj, and the lesser pilgrimage known as umrah, undertaken at other times of the year. bur-ds-aya/dhw Originally published as Muslim pilgrims pray at Mount Arafat in hajj apex
Canberra Times
28-05-2025
- Canberra Times
I had beer and burger at the world's northernmost pub - here's the verdict
The beer is cold, the burgers are hot and my toes are finally starting to thaw. Outside, it's minus 14 degrees Celsius, even though it's summer. We've flopped into chairs around a table at Barentz Gastropub in the settlement of Longyearbyen, Svalbard, an archipelago a short 1200 kilometres from the North Pole.
Sydney Morning Herald
25-05-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
Where does the outback actually begin? Even Tourism Australia isn't sure
Tassie's not the outback. Neither is Canberra. Uluru – that irresistible drawcard in the geographic and spiritual heart of Australia – most definitely is. Between those far-flung certainties are hundreds of thousands of square kilometres that aren't as easy to define, even if you're an Australian who is extremely familiar with this 'wide brown land' (brown? Surely Dorothea Mackellar meant 'red'). No wonder you find odd questions on Google such as 'what city is near the outback in Australia?' and 'what is the real outback in Australia?' Strewth. The outback is real, all right, but also myth and legend, as hard to grasp as a shimmering mirage. So where does the outback begin and end? I started pondering this question a few years back after chortling over a cover line on an esteemed weekly magazine. It boldly stated that Biloela was in outback Queensland. Having spent part of my childhood in the nearby town of Monto, I knew that was wildly untrue. Biloela is surrounded by verdant countryside and is a mere 100 kilometres from the coast as the crow flies. In less than two hours, you can drive north to the thriving city of Rockhampton – Australia's Beef Capital - and join its throng of 85,000 residents. Only a headline writer in Sydney would think Biloela is in the outback. Mount Isa caravan park co-owner and outback ambassador for Drive Queensland, Kylie Rixon, has thoughts on the subject. 'We're not the bush, we're not the country – we're the outback,' she tells me, when describing her remote mining community that's roughly halfway between Darwin and Brisbane. 'The outback to me is a feeling which is hard to put into words. It's that sense of community, that calmness, the serenity, the isolation, which a lot of the time is not geographical. 'We are geographically isolated but, as far as community goes, we're far from isolated. Because we all live so remotely, our friends become our family and our sporting teams become our Christmas barbecues. That's why we've got such a strong community with sporting groups and so on, because they do become our little outback families. All of that stuff contributes to a society that's really welcoming and nurturing and friendly.' According to a Tourism Australia article titled 'Guide to the Outback', some 81 per cent of our country can call itself the outback but it's also a place with 'no defined borders'. More helpfully, it adds that the outback typically falls into three climate categories: arid, semi-arid and north of the Tropic of Capricorn, a latitudinal line that runs through Rockhampton's southern suburbs (perhaps that headline-writer wasn't so far off after all). Regional coastal cities such as Townsville and Cairns aren't the outback but Broken Hill, in Far West NSW, is part of the mysterious landscape that lies somewhere beyond the 'back of Bourke'.
