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Dr Greg Ayers,
Director of Meteorology
Bureau of Meteorology
GPO Box 1289
Melbourne Vic 3001


Dear Dr Ayers,

As a long-time consumer of the Bureau's services, I would like to discuss with you an important matter that is at the top of everyone's agenda at this time.

I refer, of course, to the weather.

I realise you are a busy man, and your Bureau is doing its best to provide weather services to the entire nation, and indeed your record in this area is exemplary: I can scarcely remember a single day in recent years that has passed without some sort of weather. Your team are clearly on the ball and showing superb dedication.

However, I really must ask you to reconsider policy on the matter of the weather conditions in Canberra of late.

Canberra is, I am sure you're aware, a lovely little town. Perhaps it's not as well-endowed with restaurants as your home town of Melbourne, or as bustling and cosmopolitan (that is to say, crowded and chaotic) as Sydney. It also can't hope to match Darwin's yank-eating crocodile population or Adelaide's prodigious supply of burst water mains. But it does have one quality, which I have found most desirable and which I would not like to see eroded, which is this: it's quite possible to go outside for most of the year and not drop dead of heat exhaustion.

Lately, however, this has not been the case.

I realise, as I said, that your Bureau is engaged in important work, but surely you could take a moment to check the settings on your machinery? Dialing the humidity down to under the current 98.5% and dropping the temperature below 35° would not be difficult, and I'm sure the resulting savings in fuel would be of benefit to the entire nation.

Please consider this simple request. I remain,

Yours Faithfully,

E. T. F. Bat, Brigadier General (retired)