On dry land

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
Physician
Richmond, VIC

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...

Whether the weather be fine,
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold,
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather,
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not!
Anon

Comparison of (a) average temperatures (minimum/maximum) and (b) total monthly rainfall for Melbourne and Sydney in the 1999 football season.

Ruth M Armstrong
Assistant Editor
The Medical Journal of Australia

1. Australian Weather Statistics. <http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~cloader/weather//>