On dry land
MJA 1999; 171: 684
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To the Editor: My first reaction to reading "On dry land" (in In this
Issue, in the 5 April issue of the Journal1) was to ask myself, "hang on,
isn't the Australian Medical Association (AMA) based in Canberra
now, and surely Canberra wouldn't be crowing about the superiority of
its winters over Melbourne's?". Then, of course, a quick look at the
first page of that issue revealed that the Journal is published in . . .
surprise, surprise ... Sydney!
It seems that The Medical Journal of Australia is as Sydneycentric as the ABC: "Most of us [my italics] have long suspected that Aussie Rules football should not be played outside of Melbourne". Most Sydneysiders, perhaps (although you may want to look at the number of people attending matches played by the Swans compared with those at rugby league games before you get too confident), but, in any case, Australian Rules has completely dominated football south and west of the Murray River. This is an area which contains nearly half of Australia's population, and, more importantly, nearly half of the members of the AMA. You then proffer the gratuitous insult that knee injuries could be reduced if "grounds were prepared with constant watering and little exposure to the sun -- simulating the conditions of a typical Melbourne winter!". I wonder if the same terms would have been used if the In this Issue item had been written more recently, in light of Sydney's weather in the last few months compared with Melbourne's glorious autumn and mild early winter. A David Grounds
1. On dry land [In this Issue]. Med J Aust 1999; 170: 191.
In reply: We stand castigated for our Sydneycentricity.
Grounds' observations about the weather in the two cities during the
1999 football season aroused some curiosity in our editorial office,
so we obtained the recent weather statistics (derived from Bureau of
Meteorology data) from a very helpful Western Australian
website.1 As the Figure shows, Sydney,
although slightly warmer, had a much wetter six months in 1999.
Further, the statistics for average rainfall between 1840 and 1989
show that Sydney's football season is always wetter than
Melbourne's. So, it seems the answer to where we would rather spend
winter, and which football code we would rather support, lies not in
the weather...
Ruth M Armstrong 1. Australian Weather Statistics.
<http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~cloader/weather//>
©MJA 1999
Readers may print a single copy for personal use. No further reproduction or distribution of the articles should proceed without the permission of the publisher. For permission, contact the Australasian Medical Publishing Company. Journalists are welcome to write news stories based on what they read here, but should acknowledge their source as "an article published on the Internet by The Medical Journal of Australia <http://www.mja.com.au>". <URL: http://www.mja.com.au/> ª 1999 Medical Journal of Australia. We appreciate your comments. | |||
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Comparison of (a) average temperatures (minimum/maximum) and (b) total monthly rainfall for Melbourne and Sydney in the 1999 football season. | |||
