When the temperature hits 30 degrees in Lismore

The mercury hit over thirty degrees today, a warm day for the start of September, and I went out for a wander around town on my mobility scooter—getting swooped twice by a territorial magpie near Lismore Square for good measure.

Some things, like dodging those black-and-white dive-bombers never change. It’s a rite of passage you just accept, much like growing up here in the seventies and eighties with a mop of long, blonde hair that earned me the family nickname “Shirley Temple”—complete with the casual, era-typical homophobia of the time, and a recent reminder of those teenage golden locks from an old teacher at a memorial service yesterday.

Thinking back on those school years summer days meant heading down to the Lismore baths. Back then, they were packed. We didn’t bother much with sunblock, and skin safety wasn’t really part of the vernacular, which we certainly pay for now.

But those pools were the hub of the town, alongside water sports and swimming out at the lakeside pool on the outskirts of South Lismore—a spot that’s mostly grown over now, just like the old pool itself, which emptied out long before the floods arrived.

Wandering down by the river today around one o’clock, it was completely deserted. No one on the water at all. It’s a sharp contrast to how it used to be. Decades ago, water-skiing and boats were a regular weekend sight, and a group of teachers from our regional high school even used to keep their own boat for rowing up and down the stream. We’d fish down on the banks—sometimes with a simple fishing line wrapped around a cordial bottle—and splash about.

It’s not that today’s habits are inherently worse, just different. People aren’t glued to the river anymore, likely preferring a screen at home or making the quick thirty-minute drive out to Ballina or Byron Bay, which feels much closer now than it did when we were kids.

Naturally, the 2022 flood left a heavy psychological mark on everyone’s relationship with the water, even if most of the time it’s just a quiet, pleasant little river passing through town. We lost some of those local water spaces, and maybe we swapped riverbanks for Netflix and mobile phones, trading a sweaty afternoon on the grass for air conditioning or coastal trips.

It’s not about the “good old days”—those had their flaws and sunburns. It’s just interesting to watch how a town shifts around you, while the magpies still guard their trees just the same.