Mark Twain piles up place names like a man gasping for air, turning the map of Australia into a cast of characters all swooning under a brutal sun. The speaker doesn’t just describe the heat—he makes every town, river, and creature a mourner at the landscape’s funeral. Animals pant, sigh, and sink into a “slumber of death,” while lost breezes and silent regions cry out for cool gardens and healing waters. It’s a mock-tragic elegy, deliberately over-the-top, with the air of a man fanning himself in comic despair. Beneath the absurdity, you feel a genuine, sticky exhaustion—a longing for the “balmy soft airs” of Mittagong that feels half joke, half prayer. The relentless rhythm of the names builds an almost dizzying sense of heat, as if the whole continent is sealed inside a furnace. The result is a love letter to shade, written by someone who’s clearly melting.
A Sweltering Day In Australia — Summary
The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree, Where fierce Mullengudgery's smothering fires Far from the breezes of Coolgardie Burn ghastly and blue as the day expires;
And Murriwillumba complaineth in song For the garlanded bowers of Woolloomooloo, And the Ballarat Fly and the lone Wollongong They dream of the gardens of Jamberoo;
The wallabi sighs for the Murrubidgee, For the velvety sod of the Munno Parah, Where the waters of healing from Muloowurtie Flow dim in the gloaming by Yaranyackah;
The Koppio sorrows for lost Wolloway, And sigheth in secret for Murrurundi, The Whangeroo wombat lamenteth the day That made him an exile from Jerrilderie;
The Teawamute Tumut from Wirrega's glade, The Nangkita swallow, the Wallaroo swan, They long for the peace of the Timaru shade And thy balmy soft airs, O sweet Mittagong!
The Kooringa buffalo pants in the sun, The Kondoparinga lies gaping for breath, The Kongorong Camaum to the shadow has won, But the Goomeroo sinks in the slumber of death;
In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain The Yatala Wangary withers and dies, And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain, To the Woolgoolga woodlands despairingly flies;
Sweet Nangwarry's desolate, Coonamble wails, And Tungkillo Kuito in sables is drest, For the Whangerei winds fall asleep in the sails And the Booleroo life-breeze is dead in the west.
Mypongo, Kapunda, O slumber no more Yankalilla, Parawirra, be warned There's death in the air! Killanoola, wherefore Shall the prayer of Penola be scorned?
Cootamundra, and Takee, and Wakatipu, Toowoomba, Kaikoura are lost From Onkaparinga to far Oamaru All burn in this hell's holocaust!
Paramatta and Binnum are gone to their rest In the vale of Tapanni Taroom, Kawakawa, Deniliquin - all that was best In the earth are but graves and a tomb!
Narrandera mourns, Cameron answers not When the roll of the scathless we cry Tongariro, Goondiwindi, Woolundunga, the spot Is mute and forlorn where ye lie.